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There is no evidence that Google sanctioned such conduct. According to the post from OSM (http://opengeodata.org/google-ip-vandalizing-openstreetmap) it is a single IP address from Google India. It could very well be a single employee or even malware on one computer trying to make Google look bad. No way to know without a full response from Google though.

"[Google] deliberately polluting OpenStreetMap's data"

See here for more on this:
http://opengeodata.org/google-ip-vandalizing-openstreetmap

Though I'm not sure how well to trust North Korean OSM. I can just picture some guy in a cubicle in NK building phantom roads and towns all over the place just because.

Unfortunately, Google have already been caught vandalising OSM...

From the same Google India IP range comes a vandalism attack on OpenStreetMap, the open-data alternative to Googlemaps:

The bogus changes range from the obvious adding or deleting of nodes to the map or posting junk labels on locations, to the subtle but dangerous – such as reversing traffic flow on one way streets. Two accounts have been noted modifying maps in London and New York, and have been making more obvious changes since last Thursday 12 January. OpenStreetMap has yet to do a full analysis of activity from the IP range which amounts to 102,000 hits using 17 accounts over the last year.

OpenStreetMap claims map vandalism traced to Google IP range
OpenStreetMap blog posting
Troubling Google Contractor Allegedly Caught Vandalizing Open Street Map

• Inveneo. They are helping setting up a terrestrial wireless network. Because that is one of the things they do. http://www.inveneo.org/?q=haiti-response
• ushahidi is setting up and managing their crisis-reporting application here http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ more of what they do is here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/01/15/haiti-update/
• The missing persons registry is here: http://www.haitianquake.com/ (google took that one over, it seems)
• There is a CrisisCamp for techies going on in DC today. They need GIS experts & programmers specifically. If you are in the area, here are the details: http://ow.ly/WQDD
• The university of heidelberg (yup, not a company) has put up a routing service based on Openstreetmap data: http://openls.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/osm-haiti/
• There is more on what the OSM community has done here: http://www.opengeodata.org/2010/01/14/haiti-openstreetmap-response/

In short, you don't even have to go to Haiti to be a helpful techie.

I thought you there was no copyright on data under US law. C.f. the OpenStreetMap legal issues http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=262. There may be contractual rights in the picture, but only if those were negotiated already.

This is a direct copy of this related story:
Vector One discuss national mapping and the UK Ordnance Survey and link to a The Guardian article. The OpenGeoData blog has a podcast with Ed Parsons, CTO of the Ordnance Survey. While GIS User host an announcement by the OS about advanced spatial address data access. From the Guardian article: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he defines as a web of data using standard formats so that relevant data can be found and processed by computers."