The Spatial Miscellany

This week news broke that Microsoft have acquired Multimap, a UK based web mapping company. Multimap is a popular website for looking up an address and\or finding travel directions. As a company Multimap have a proven business model based on selling location based advertising (long before Sergey met Larry at Stanford), and a consultancy service for the provision of bespoke web mapping solutions. But why do Microsoft want Multimap, and what do you get for $50 Million?

The obvious answer is clients. With a client list in excess of 1200 companies, which reads like a who’s who of business, the acquisition gives Microsoft a big foot in the door to sell similar services based on their Virtual Earth platform.

Perhaps Microsoft may find use for some of the datasets acquired by Multimap, who recently pulled off the remarkable feat of displaying OS mapping data online via their mapping API. In addition, one suspects they’ll also pick up some canny developers, some of whom even blog (here and here).

But for a company whose name is often spelled with a dollar…Micro$oft, and whose nickname is that of a small rodent (The Vole), could their intentions be somewhat more sinister? In acquiring Multimap, and their intellectual property, one assumes Microsoft now has that all embracing patent for displaying a map online…

#6,240,360 – Abstract
A map of the area of a client computer is requested from a map server. Information relating to a place of interest is requested from an information server by the client computer. The information is superimposed or overlaid on a map image at a position on the map image corresponding to the location of the place of interest on the map. The information (or “overlay”) server may contain details of, for example, hotels, restaurants, shops or the like, associated with the geographical coordinates of each location. The map server contains map data, including coordinate data representing the spatial coordinates of at least one point on the area represented by the map.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this patent borders on absurd, firstly for its breadth of coverage, and secondly its filing date- long after maps were displayed online alongside textual information. Multimap never had the deep pockets required to defend this patent, and perhaps not the inclination, can the same be said for their new owners?

Related posts from James, Kirk and elsewhere.