Yahoo (remember them?) allowed OSMers to use their aerial imagery from 2007 till 2011. Microsoft has allowed OSMers to use Bing aerial since 2010, and to be honest, it's probably been the most beneficial contribution to OSM of the ones in the article.
Also, Apple gave a talk at SotM about "working with the community" and demanded that that talk not be recorded (unlike all other talks thre) or shared with anyone else. Hardly in keeping with the spirit of "openness".
Facebook's computer vision imports are of dubious use.
Indeed the Bing imagery is one of the greatest non-financial gifts ever given by a technology company, regardless of motives.
When I started working on OSM about a decade ago my area was a greenish blur on the photo underlay and everything had to be manually positioned from GPX tracks. It took hours to map a street and given GPS error margins it was never certain to be exact.
Now anyone can log-in and start tracing roads / paths / buildings and it just takes a couple of physical visits to backfill the enumeration and names.
Just to point out that the Apple talk was not recorded due to the company wide policy. (I was at SotM)
On the FB import you still think of the first import, but after that they worked a lot with the local communities.
Also, Apple gave a talk at SotM about "working with the community" and demanded that that talk not be recorded (unlike all other talks thre) or shared with anyone else. Hardly in keeping with the spirit of "openness".
Facebook's computer vision imports are of dubious use.