Nokia Buys Geographic Search Technology Company MetaCarta

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... → Learn More

Nokia this morning announced that it has acquired MetaCarta, a privately-owned geographic intelligence company, for an undisclosed sum. Nokia says it will use MetaCarta’s technology in the area of local search and other services.

MetaCarta was founded in 2001, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs over 30 people.

MetaCarta’s solutions enable companies to bridge the gap between content and maps. Its products fall into four major categories: the MetaCarta Platform, Geographic Data Modules, GeoWeb Applications, and Hosted Content Collections.

To see an example of what MetaCarta’s technology is capable of, see NewsMap, a hosted map mashup / extension that enables Web publishers to dynamically display maps that show the places mentioned in their news articles. Or check out its GeoSearch News service, which aggregates news from thousands of sources and displays a map of the locations mentioned in stories.

MetaCarta also has a partnership with Microsoft in place to provide its Geographic Search and Referencing Platform to deliver map-based local news within the Microsoft Vine service.

For Nokia, this is the second small acquisition in two weeks – it recently picked up mobile Web browser company Novarra. Its purchase of MetaCarta is another testament to the Finnish mobile giant’s focus on location and navigation-based services for its wide range of handsets that find their way into the hands of customers all over the globe.

Company: Nokia
Website: nokia.com
IPO: NYSE:NOK

Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications corporation. It is primarily engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries. They make a wide range of mobile devices with services and software that enable people to experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games, business mobility and more. Nokia is the owner of Symbian operation system and partially owns MeeGo operating system.

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Company: MetaCarta
Website: metacarta.com
Launch Date: January 1, 2001
Funding: $10M

MetaCarta geo-enables content to make it useful. The company’s technology identifies geographic references in content, which enables monetization, localization, and allows users to find information they couldn’t have found before. MetaCarta is map agnostic. The company’s geographic search platform integrates with a wide range of mapping and document management technologies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and ESRI. MetaCarta monetizes content on mobile devices, localizes content to deliver relevant news, and creates new revenue opportunities by driving premium services, enhancing...

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