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Wed

Dec 12
2007

Brady Forrest

Brady Forrest

Live Maps Buys MultiMap; Launches in China

Today is a big day for the international side of Microsoft has bought UK mapping portal MultiMap, a partner of Mappoint/Virtual Earth for five years. They are also announcing the launch of Live Maps in China.

multimap london

Multmap will be rolled into Erik Jorgensen's Virtual Earth organization. It has a large API business and this will immediately bring the combined, paying customer-base of Microsoft's mapping platform to almost 4000. MultiMaps' API most recent addition is Static maps, for downlevel browsers. There is no word whether the Virtual Earth Platform will replace MultiMap's -- my guess is that it is a question of "when" not "if".

Sean Phelan, founder of MultiMap, spoke on the issues of mapping a global world at Where 2.0 2007. He will not be staying with the company post-acquisition.

I find Multimap's maps to be quite busy, not nearly as clean as VE's or Google's. I really like their Wikipedia layer - I hope that feature makes a migration over to VE.

Multimap seems to be more about gaining API traffic than a technology or consumer traffic acquisition. Justin Osmer, a Microsoft spokesperson, told me "Multimap is a mapping leader in the UK and now combined with us Virtual Earth and Live Search Maps is the number one online mapping platform worldwide." Paying customers are hard to beat -- especially in a business as costly as mapping.

china ve

VE is also announcing their launch in China today. No 3D data that I can see, but it does have street data and a transit layer for some cities. I'll have more information on that later as it becomes available.



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Comments: 3

Ullrich [12.12.07 07:03 PM]

Having maps in China is nice. One thing that escapes me though, is why Live Search offers only the Chinese interface. Or is there any way to change the language?
I'm browsing from China. Maybe that is the cause of the problem?

Chaitanya [12.13.07 04:37 PM]

"I find Multimap's maps to be quite busy, not nearly as clean as VE's or Google's. I really like their Wikipedia layer - I hope that feature makes a migration over to VE."


If you hover your mouse over the "Map" button on the map you will be provided with a choice of map styles available for the area and zoom level you are at. This allows users comfortable with Bart maps style to use that and those (typical American Users) familiar with the TeleAtlas style to use those maps.


Cheers,
Chaitanya

Chaitanya [12.13.07 04:41 PM]

Aah, sorry about the multiple posts and also the bit about American users in the brackets in the first post. I meant to say "typically american users" as thats the common map style in the US whereas Bart maps (ie: crowded maps) are popular in the UK.

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