Google offers a free Maps API and a paid for Enterprise Maps API.
Free API
The full Free API T&C’s can be found here
The source of concern to OS is this clause:
11.1 Content License. Google claims no ownership over Your Content, and you retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Your Content. By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content in the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content through the Service and as search results through Google Services. This license is solely for the purpose of enabling Google to operate the Service, to promote the Service (including through public presentations), and to index and serve such content as search results through Google Services. If you are unable or unwilling to provide such a license to Your Content, please see the FAQ for information on configuring your Maps API Implementation to opt out. 
OS are concerned at the granting of “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license” despite this being “solely for the purpose of enabling Google to operate the Service” and do not consider the option to opt out of granting such a license by editing robots.txt as clearly overriding the grant of “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license”
Until such time as OS confirm that they have been able to clarify with Google their understanding of Google’s terms, geo.me recommends that LG uses the Google Maps Free API for “Non OS Data”, “OS OpenData” and “Free to Use Data”.
Enterprise API
The full Enterprise Maps API T&C’s can be found here.
The equivalent clause to Clause 11 above is:
1.2 From Customer to Google. When Customer submits queries via the Services that include Customer Content, Google requires a license to that Customer Content so it can process the query and return results to Customer. Therefore, by submitting Customer Content to Google through the Services, Customer grants to Google a limited, irrevocable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license, in the Territory, during the Term, to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute this Customer Content solely to enable Google to provide and improve the Services to Customer.
This license is not perpetual, it is restricted to the term of the Enterprise API and is “solely to enable Google to provide and improve the Services to Customer“.
Ordnance Survey have confirmed that the use of derived data with the Enterprise Maps API will not breach their license conditions.
Geo.me recommends that for derived data in which OS retains IPR and partially restricts the subsequent distribution of that data LG should use the Google Maps Enterprise API.
Alternatives to Google Maps
Geo.me can offer alternative API’s to Google that do not include license conditions similar to the clause that has prompted OS concerns. Examples include the Open Layers open source API combined with base maps provided by OpenStreetMap or Cloudmade and other commercial API’s such as Bing. However none of these services offer the same combination of rich features, performance and scalability within a virtually unlimited free to use API as do Google, which is why geo.me recommend the use of Google Maps Free API wherever possible.
