Internet search company Google Inc has acquired Keyhole Corp, a supplier of online satellite maps that allow users to zoom down to street level to specific locations, Google said on Wednesday.
Terms were not disclosed. Both Google and Keyhole (http://www.keyhole.com/) are based in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Keyhole's system is built on database with trillions of bits of mapping data collected from satellites and airplanes.
"With Keyhole, you can fly like a superhero from your computer at home to a street corner somewhere else in the world - or find a local hospital, map a road trip or measure the distance between two points," Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice president of product management said in a statement.
Google said it had cut the price of Keyhole's mapping service to $29.95 a year from $69.95, effective immediately.
With an Internet connection, a user can enter an address or other location information and Keyhole's software hooks up to a database and takes the user to a digital image of that location on computer screen.
The three-dimensional, interactive software gives users the option to zoom in from space-level to street-level, tilt and rotate the view, or search for other information such as hotels, parks, automated-teller bank machines or subways.
Google rivals Yahoo and Microsoft MSN offer online mapping services of their own using detailed drawings that allow users to zoom down to street-level scale.
Shares of Google rose $2.20, or 1 percent, to $184 in early trading on the Nasdaq stock market.
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