I'm currently at the Google DevFest in the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where people from Mountain View and elsewhere are presenting and demo-ing various web-related Google APIs. Pamela Fox of the Google Maps team is currently talking about Google Maps API (and Map Maker, Earth API, etc.).

I talked about Google Map Maker vs. OpenStreetMap before and found Google Map Maker wanting (just like the reaction of many OpenStreetMappers).

Anyway, Pamela Fox hinted that Maps API developers might be able to use Map Maker map tiles as an option instead of the regular Maps map tiles. However, there's no mention yet about the licensing issues of the map tiles and the raw data. I plan to talk to her later regarding this.

(I also want to ask if Google would be inclined to go the way of Yahoo! in letting OSM use the satellite images as well for tracing.)