OneBusAway doesn't provide data to Google and presumably never did (I don't know and the article doesn't say); the data is provided by the bus service. Both OneBusAway and Google consume it.

Obviously the parent meant that the transit providers should do this, since they also use OBA.

More generally, in the same way IXs have peering arrangements for traffic, there could be peering arrangements between data owners (e.g. bus location providers) and location API providers like Google.