Of course they'd have to get the satellite data from elsewhere (though they couldn't do much worse than the stuff they have frankly), but the vector data and POIs would have been a good start, and probably more accurate and complete than what they have, at least in some countries. They would probably always have to buy satellite imagery.
I'd rather have seen more focus on getting the basics right, even if it meant they had to leave out (for example) satellite imagery in the first iteration. As it is they have broken satellite data, broken street mapping, and incomplete place names.
If they had chosen to back an open project like this they could have had a team of people worldwide fixing their maps for them, rather than trying to collate and correct thousands of bug reports from around the world and push them out in revisions. I wouldn't like to be on their mapping team over the next few months :)
I'd rather have seen more focus on getting the basics right, even if it meant they had to leave out (for example) satellite imagery in the first iteration. As it is they have broken satellite data, broken street mapping, and incomplete place names.
If they had chosen to back an open project like this they could have had a team of people worldwide fixing their maps for them, rather than trying to collate and correct thousands of bug reports from around the world and push them out in revisions. I wouldn't like to be on their mapping team over the next few months :)