To be clear, the funding here is via a Google Faculty Research Award, which is a one-time payment largely focused on supporting one grad student for one year.

To be clear, the funding here is via a Google Faculty Research Award, which is a one-time payment largely focused on supporting one grad student for one year. https://research.google.com/research-outreach.html#/research-outreach/faculty-engagement/faculty-research-awards https://research.google.com/research-outreach.html#/research... Google is typically fairly hands off with these awards and we have not, at anytime, felt pressure to pursue a certain direction because of Google funding (though of course, there may be implicit biases that we are unaware of). Most of our funding is via the NSF. Project Sidewalk is quite dependent on Google Streetview and its API. I don't believe there is a good alternative out there currently (Mapillary is a possibility; Cyclomedia is another but they work via private contracts, which would likely be prohibitively expensive for us). So, if Google decides to end Streetview or significantly change its API, then it will dramatically impact Project Sidewalk's viability. Our hope is that Streetview only becomes more robust and updated more frequently, which will make it an even more valuable "urban science" dataset.