It's telling that they got the funding years before Pokemon Go. You are right that everything was Ingress back then, just not at the scale as Pokemon. The difference between laying down fields in a park thick with portals before and after Pokemon Go was the amount of people in the area.

If you want to get really deep with it, you can start looking at the partnership Niantic had with Goruck and how they started hiring a whole bunch of SOF guys to run Ingress Goruck events.

The part that is probably getting you downvoted is probably the acceptance of the whole thing. It's still not ok.

Those that trade liberty for freedom® will have neither.

I see things differently. Maybe (just maybe) industrializing data collection does not affect my way of living, and maybe, as you say, we got better maps out of this.

Still, I do care about other people, those that are directly affected by these technologies. Especially because of their military use. I believe it's important to care about others as well.

Btw and since you won't watch this, if you feel like, check out the company called Niantic.