It's a valid question.

My guess is the actual objection is the artificial feeling of the Google specific information. It cannot possibly be useful in any other context to know what the Street View car in Bermuda looked like when they did their coverage.

Whereas knowing about vegetation or architecture feels more generally useful. I think it's a valid point, but you're right that it is all down to memorization at some point.

Though some memorization is "vibes" where you don't specifically know how you know, but you just do. That only comes with repetition. I guess it feels more earned that way?

I think it’s more productive to ask, “why would someone attribute a different value to learning about the geography, architecture, and language of a region vs. learning about the characteristics of the hardware and software one specific company used to take a picture of it?”

I think asking that question helps move past the surface question of how information was learned (memorization) to the core issue of which learning we value and why.