I don't vastly disagree with your views on Google, but you should keep in mind that Keyhole created the technology later used in Google Earth before Google even existed. So Google had no opportunity to steal this. I also don't think Americans are particularly biased against Germans at this point in time.

ART+COM was suing Google because that's where the money was, and the link is that some of the people who had founded Keyhole in 1999 worked at Google a decade later. Google ultimately didn't license ART+COM's now-worthless patent because ART+COM didn't really understand the business proposition.

It's all very sad and unnecessary.