[notatoad]

I find "google purchased a set of map data that said this creek bed was a road" to be much more plausible than any other scenario

[cowsandmilk]

Google regularly sends surveys to people showing they are tracking their movements. Like you’ll eat at a restaurant and get a survey about it. They don’t even hide this fact that they do this:

https://support.google.com/surveys/answer/6315313?hl=en

They ask you questions about train rides and bus rides as well. Google doesn’t buy data any more, they collect it.

Why wouldn’t they be tracking where people drive and building maps about new roads from that?

[notatoad]

>Google doesn’t buy data any more

again, is this something you know to be true, or are you just guessing?