The European Commission will clear the 2.9 billion-euro ($4.5 billion) purchase on May 14, a week before the regulator's May 21 deadline to rule on the transaction, said the people, who requested anonymity because the decision isn't public.

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement geospatial tools with other IT solutions.?Why is it still so hard? What are we not doing well? Will it take another "Google Earth" to push the technology deeper into corporate computing or a new crop of graduates to be more geospatially enlightened?

Thomas and his partners already have put $400,000 of their own money into the two-year-old business. They're looking for another $700,000 to take it to the next level, Thomas said.

WineMap.org has the potential to revolutionize the $3 billion annual winegrape market, he said. It allows growers to show their vineyard locations online and offer their grapes for sale.

Growers will pay WineMap $1,200 per year, less than half of what it would cost to sell through a broker, Thomas said.

So far, about 1,500 growers are using the Web service, representing 3,000 vineyards in California and Oregon.

Mobile Video, which was founded in 1986 and is based in Kansas City, Missouri, captures geospatial images of properties for tax administrators, GIS departments and the emergency services. It employs some 40 staff operating a fleet of 16 field vehicles across the US, and manages several contracts with local government agencies.