Curiosity question about Google Earth

[BobT]

When I have GPS tracks that I look at on GE I notice that GE sometimes has different names for small roads than the Garmin Topo's are the Topo's on here.  Does GE get it's road data from other sources.  I'm talking about out in the Boonies.

[Seldom]

Different names -> likely different data sources.

[Boyd]

There are three major providers of commercial map data, Navteq, Teleatlas and Google. Navteq is owned by Nokia and Garmin licenses their map data for City Navigator as well as their 24k topo series. TomTom owns Teleatlas and provides (some?) of the data for Apple Maps. Google stands alone, although at various times in the past they purchased data from both Navteq and Teleatlas.

They all use a variety of methods to obtain their data and there are bound to be some differences.