When I first learned of this feature I thought for sure that it would be limited to Creative Commons Flickr photos. I wasn’t sure how Google could legally take high res photos for CC non-commercial photos or all rights reserved photos and integrate full sized versions of them into their product. But it seems as though this is exactly what they’ve done. If you look at the screen shot above, it features a photo by Flickr photographer Patrick Boury, if you look at that photo on Flickr, it is licensed as “all rights reserved.” I surfed Google’s Street View around San Francisco today checking out lots of the photos and many (in fact I’d say most) of the Flickr images that Google is presently using are either Creative Commons non-commercial licensed photos or all rights reserved licensed photos. - Thomas Hawk

Unless Google just changed it's business model to non-profit, it clearly sounds like infringement to me. - Jeff P. Henderson