Submitted by: twnpnews on Wednesday October 27th, 2004 at 02:27 PM EST

Web search leader 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 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 a 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 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.

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's MSN offer online mapping services of their own using detailed drawings that allow users to zoom down to street-level scale.

» Read full story @ MSNBC