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Thanks for the very informative and detailed answers. The Google TOS seems very restrictive, and I can't quite stomach the idea that our data, including photo of my house, is free to use by big companies in any way conceivable, but on the other hand, a small, maybe scientific purpose, is in violation of TOS :(

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Photos of a house from the public street isn't your data though. This is why you are empowered to go and collect all sorts of data and information that is exposed to the public in all sorts of ways, and do with it as you please.

You have just as much right to take pictures of Google's complexes from public locations and bill them should they want to use what you have collected, and this whole situation is really a good thing. Things in the public domain are in the public domain.

You are right. But on some level I don't like that huge disbalance of power, where on one hand you can take a photo with your smartphone, but someone can take a fleet of vehicles and run them 24/7 around globe, photographing everything, making hi res lidar images, georeferencing, coupling that with smartphone data, etc. I would be more OK with it, if it was open dataset though. End of rant :)

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