It's funny, Google doesn't seem to be using OSM data directly, but I think they might be looking periodically at OSM activity to know where to focus their map generation.
Google never had any real super high quality detail in my tiny home town. When I first got into OSM, I did what lots of people do: I filled in a bunch of details I know about where I grew up. Kind of fun. Well a month or so later, I checked out Google maps and, lo and behold, their data was much better for that little town. It was NOT the OSM edits I made--they didn't steal anything. But I found it odd that they'd all of a sudden take interest in a little town of less than 1500 people in the middle of nowhere. I don't know. It could have been a coincidence--It's possible they had a big world-wide map update during that month that updated everything.
Oh, and it RAISES the question, not "begs" the question.
Quoting Wikipedia:
In modern vernacular usage, "to beg the question" more frequently is used to mean "to raise the question" (as in "This begs the question of whether …") or "to dodge the question".
Google never had any real super high quality detail in my tiny home town. When I first got into OSM, I did what lots of people do: I filled in a bunch of details I know about where I grew up. Kind of fun. Well a month or so later, I checked out Google maps and, lo and behold, their data was much better for that little town. It was NOT the OSM edits I made--they didn't steal anything. But I found it odd that they'd all of a sudden take interest in a little town of less than 1500 people in the middle of nowhere. I don't know. It could have been a coincidence--It's possible they had a big world-wide map update during that month that updated everything.
Oh, and it RAISES the question, not "begs" the question.