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Global OS leviathan Microsoft has continued buying trendy stuff,announcing that it had bought UK ad-driven mapping service Multimaptoday.
Quote:
"This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growthof our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand ourplatform business beyond the UK and globally,"
said Sharon Baylay,online services manager for Microsoft.
Just how Multimap will fit with Redmond's already substantialsearch, mapping and ads portfolio isn't clear. The software Goliathalready has Live Search Maps, Virtual Earth, and aQuantive. However,it's clear that Ballmer's team would like to take some market shareaway from market leaders Google.
Multimap claims monthly unique-UK-user figures of four million-odd,five times more than Live Maps, though a distant second to Google Mapsat 11 million.
Microsoft didn't disclose the price it paid, but the Timesreportsthat the deal is "understood to be worth about $50 million", whichshould put around $25m in the pocket of Multimap founder Sean Phelan.The company made profits of £0.9m in 2006 on revenues of £12m.
Quote:
"Partnering with Microsoft gives us a world of new opportunities tobuild our mapping services into new technologies and applications,"
said Multimap CEO Jeff Kelisky.
That may be. However, it's relatively difficult (for users, anyway)to see all that much difference between Multimap's technology andMicrosoft's existing offerings. Redmond would seem to be buyingMultimap's users rather than its platform.
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