> Once upon a time maps cost a lot of money and were a government thing - you had to licence the data. In some countries yes, but in the U.S. the government-cr

> Once upon a time maps cost a lot of money and were a government thing - you had to licence the data. In some countries yes, but in the U.S. the government-created map data is licensed under much friendlier terms than Google's is. You can download huge piles of map data here, as bulk export with no strings attached: http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html Although the best map data in the western world comes from neither a government nor Google: http://www.openstreetmap.org http://www.openstreetmap.org