Originally, they couldn't license the actual data, either, because at least the road network wasn't Google's to license. It came from TeleAtlas (after Nokia had

Originally, they couldn't license the actual data, either, because at least the road network wasn't Google's to license. It came from TeleAtlas (after Nokia had bought NavTeq), Zenrin for Japan and a few more. Things were tricky like that before the Ground Truth project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls) covered enough of the planet. When Google launched navigation on Android, it lost money in countries not covered by Ground Truth, which I think was everywhere outside the US. That's because TeleAtlas and co. charged N times as much when the same data was used for real time directions.