Unprotceted wifi network data was collected as the cars passed by, yes, whether it was an accident or not who knows but there's no evidence to suggest they were being harvested to use illegally or otherwise.
Which suggests either Google are technically incompetent and didn't notice they harvested millions of peoples personal data from all around the world by "mistake", or they knew full well what they were doing hoping to get away with it.
Frankly I can't see Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt post here with "ooops, I accidentallied your Wifi data..."
Google were at the very least mapping peoples WiFi signals without asking to include as a location based service they then make money from.
Sorry, I don't see why the loyalty to a company that is just about making money. That's what they do, sometimes they misjudge what they're getting away with, sometimes they don't. Let's get past the whole "Google are just a bunch of nice guys that do no evil" thing. They are there to make their shareholders very, very rich. And there's nothing wrong in that, although their business practises are getting to be increasing, err, interesting..
Given that a huge chunk of Googles monumental profits is based on indexing and recording other peoples work, without permission and for free and then redelivering it I don't see how they can cry and try to take the moral high ground if someone else looks at the data they produce publicly.
Pot... Kettle...