I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling.

I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also to acquire what became Google Earth. I believe it all began working with public data. They have obviously added lots of proprietary data since that time. They have a massive amount of cash to spend. Far more than the libraries and government agencies in the US who have the public data.