Microsoft Acquires Multimap

From Microsoft PR:

“This morning at 7am PT, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Multimap, one of the United Kingdom’s top 100 technology companies and one of the leading online mapping services in the world.  Multimap will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft as part of the Online Services Groups and the Microsoft Virtual Earth and Search teams.  The acquisition will play a significant role in the future and growth of Microsoft’s Search business and the Live Search product and will strengthen Microsoft’s overall search, local and geo-mapping offering, driving further technological innovation through our business.”
PR here.
The Guardian offers some facts and figures, though the price is not being disclosed.

Data from measurement firm Nielsen Online shows Google Maps has a 21.4% reach among the world’s web users, compared with 1.4% for Multimap.

Google Maps recorded an estimated 71.5 million unique users during October and Google Earth, which offers satellite images as well as road maps, logged 22.7 million users.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Maps had 7.1 million unique users globally during October.

Multimap had 1.4 million unique users, according to Nielsen, also behind rivals MapQuest, ViaMichelin, Mappy and Map24.

I’ll note that while Multimap has great tech, it also has data. Recall from a recent post that Mulitmap has a “12 year old company created database.”