Now I am no lawyer however I recently found out that Google Earth cannot be used for anything except for private user. This made me realise that there are MANY organisation that Many may not be aware that they are using organisations currently using the program against the terms and conditions of the program.
I did some digging and as you can see below the usage table for Google Earth clearly states “Personal use” and the Google Earth Pro versions usage is “Consultants and businesses of ALL SIZES, including site-wide installations”.
Update: On the same page there is also a question that states “If your business is looking to use Google Earth for any external purpose, you will need to licence Google Earth Pro”.
There is also a clause in section 1 of the Google Earth licensing agreement that states “Any animations, movies, prints or screen outputs generated with the Software are for your use only.”.
I think the take away from this is that if you have deployed/installed Google Earth to any of your computers that is used for work then be very careful as you may have broken the licence agreement.
OK… So how does this compare to Bing?
Again I am not a lawyer… but taking a look at the Bing Maps Code of Conduct http://explore.live.com/code-of-conduct?mkt=en-au you are restricted to "use Bing Maps for any bulk printing or downloading of imagery or data” or “Copy, save, download, distribute, transmit or manipulate the photographic imagery.”. So while there are some restrictions it does not seem to be as restrictive as the Google Earth licence.
Either way if you are using maps from any online service then I would strongly recommend that you fully understand the licensing agreement before using it for any work propose.
