Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday acquired U.K. mapping company Multimap for an undisclosed sum, as part of a move by the U.S. technology giant to offer more targeted advertising and better compete with Google Inc.Microsoft has built its mapping services over the past few years with offerings like Virtual Earth and Live Search. Multimap, an Internet maps and location-based services company, will help Microsoft expand its location-based search engine and advertising platforms, Microsoft said.Multimap, which has been running since 1996, is one of Europe’s most popular mapping Web sites and is also available on mobile phones and personal digital assistants. It provides street-level maps, photography and travel directions to users in the U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S.

Multimap will be run as a subsidiary of Microsoft, as part of the Virtual Earth and Search unit within the company’s Online Services Group. Microsoft has been struggling to compete with Google in the mapping space, where that company leads the market with its Google Maps and Google Earth products. Google Maps had 71.5 million unique users during October, while its Earth service recorded 22.7 million users, according to research company Nielsen Online. In comparison, Microsoft’s Windows Live Maps service had 7.1 million unique users worldwide during the same period, Nielsen said. Multimap had 1.4 million users. It will be still pretty hard to defeat Google Maps as their service is almost flawless…

Source: Wallstreetjournal