Niantic announces “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

People complaining here that you are somehow owed something for contributing to the data set, or that because you use google maps or reCAPTCHA you are owed access to their training data. I mean, I'd like that data too. But you did get something in return already. A game that you enjoy (or your wouldn't play it), free and efficient navigation (better than your TomTom ever worked), sites not overwhelmed by bots or spammers. Yeah google gets more out of it than you probably do, but it's incorrect to say that you are getting 'nothing' in return.

I'm not sure quite what the ownership is, but Niantic isn't a subsidiary of Alphabet or Google.

The company was formed as Niantic Labs in 2010 as an internal startup within Google, founded by the then-head of Google's Geo Division (Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Street View).

It became an independent entity in October 2015 when Google restructured under Alphabet Inc. During the spinout, Niantic announced that Google, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company would invest up to $30 million in Series-A funding. Not sure what the current ownership is (they've raised a few more times since then), but they're seemingly still very closely tied with Google.