Open maps used to be the job of the USGS. They stopped doing it because of Google.
I was touring the USGS in Palo Alto about 10 years ago, and the librarian there was lamenting the existence of Google. He said that while it was nice that Google was doing all this work, it was causing the USGS to stop doing it, since they could get the data from Google.
He predicted that the USGS would get severely cut in their funding for mapping activities because of it, and he was right. He was worried that all the best data would be locked up in Google's servers, and he was right about that too.
I used to work in the building with the USGS map store. It was very sad to see it close. It wasn't commercial map providers that caused it to close, it was the avilablilty of USGS topo maps online, and a faster data collection to map pipeline. You can still order maps printed on demand directly from the USGS.
I was touring the USGS in Palo Alto about 10 years ago, and the librarian there was lamenting the existence of Google. He said that while it was nice that Google was doing all this work, it was causing the USGS to stop doing it, since they could get the data from Google.
He predicted that the USGS would get severely cut in their funding for mapping activities because of it, and he was right. He was worried that all the best data would be locked up in Google's servers, and he was right about that too.