I remember the Ingress community to be avidly involved with the game's competitive aspect, trying to get their friends in and coordinate almost in a hierarchy. However, I never personally liked the 'pay to get ahead' idea. I wonder if games like these could be turned into solving a real problem for some actual impact.
That's why I kept Ingress and uninstalled Go. It's a great simple resource when you're in a new town, and it is a lot more interesting then Google maps.
To gather data? Maybe. It definitely uses the data Google already has, which vastly outweighs the number of people using Ingress. I'd assume Google Maps is far more valuable than Ingress is.
I think it's also worth mentioning for context that Niantic is not owned by Google anymore, though Google is a major investor still.
