Nokia Purchases MetaCarta, a Geographic Search Technology Company
Nokia just announced that they have purchased the company MetaCarta. MetaCarta is a geographic intelligence company, privately owned, and was purchased for an amount not released.
Nokia’s purchase of MetaCarta is going to be used to be able to bolster the technology in the local search arena as well as other areas not discussed.
MetaCarta was originally founded in ’01 and has their base in Cambridge, MA. They employ a little over 30 people. The solutions that are put forth by MetaCarta are those that are able to enable companies to be able to bridge the gap between maps and content.
The products of MetaCarta fall into four major categories:
• The MetaCarta platform
• Geographic data modules
• Geo web applications
• Hosted content collections
In order to see an example of the things that MetaCarta is able to do with their technology you need to look no further than NewsMap. NewsMap is a hosted map extension or mash-up which enables a web publisher to display maps dynamically which will show the places that are mentioned within their article or content.
Another good example is the GeoSearch news service which aggregates news taken from literally thousands of different sources and then will display a map of all of the locations that are mentioned in the stories.
MetaCarta currently has a relationship with the technology giant Microsoft in order to provide their map and local news services for the Microsoft Vine service within the realm of geographic search and the referencing platforms.
With regards to Nokia, this is actually their second of two acquisitions within just a two week period. Prior to purchasing MetaCarta they picked up Novarra which is a mobile web browser company. The purchase of Novarra and then the purchase of MetaCarta just show that Nokia is shifting gears to really bear down on the location and navigation based services for a large amount of their handsets for customers throughout the world.
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