It's not blessed by Google. In fact they sent a C&D to CM over it.
http://gizmodo.com/5367420/google-threatens-cyanogen-android...
The site(s) you're downloading it from are committing copyright violations and are subject to a DMCA takedown.
http://gizmodo.com/5367420/google-threatens-cyanogen-android...
The site(s) you're downloading it from are committing copyright violations and are subject to a DMCA takedown.
Yes, that is technically true. But in practice, it's not like Google just haven't noticed yet and are likely to take them down any day now: the current situation (cyanogenmod ships without gapps, but google won't prevent goo.im hosting them or cyanogenmod linking to goo.im) was worked out in 2009 after that C&D, and Google seems to have been fine with it for the last 4 years - they even let goo.im have an app in the play store - even if, officially, they still reserve their right to assert their copyright in the future.
(The wording of the license for gapps now specifies that the licence is scoped to the device[1], so an end-user who installs gapps (e.g. from goo.im) on cyanogenmod is not committing copyright infringement if their phone came with gapps (i.e. not kindles etc.))
[1] "..licensed to handset manufacturers shipping devices", http://source.android.com/faqs.html
Google obviously decided some time ago that cutting off CyanogenMod from the Google universe would not be in their best interests, whatever the strict legality of the situation.