Location-Based Technology Company Acquired

Microsoft has offered US$96 million in cash to acquire Vicinity Corporation. Vicinity’s products enable businesses to provide geographic information, such as maps and driving directions, to their customers through a variety of interfaces, including the Web, wireless devices, and telephones. The acquisition could net Microsoft some big-name corporate customers for its own geographic information service for developers, MapPoint .NET. It will also provide Microsoft with new technology—such as the ability to offer automated driving directions over the phone—to improve MapPoint .NET and other applications, such as MSCRM.

What Microsoft Gains

Vicinity will become part of the MapPoint division at Microsoft. The division’s two main products are the MapPoint desktop application, which is targeted at Office users who occasionally need to locate addresses and visualize mapped data (e.g., to plot sales revenues by territory); and the MapPoint .NET service, which lets developers “location-enable” Web and client applications—generate maps and provide directions, for example—without having to maintain private databases of cartographic and demographic data. (For more background, see “MapPoint .NET Shows Way to Commercial Web Services” on page 21 of the May 2002 Update.)