Yahoo to buy UK-based local search company
Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
Yahoo said on Tuesday it had agreed to acquire UK-based Whereonearth, a local online search and advertising technology company. Whereonearth engineers have developed "sophisticated technology that contains a unique combination of global data and software algorithms that make local search possible," Bassel Ojjeh, vice president of Yahoo's strategic data solutions, said in a blog. "Together, we'll be able to provide the most geo-relevant information across all of Yahoo's products and services." Yahoo and competitors Google and MSN are in a heated battle for what many people see as the next search and advertising frontier -- the local market.