As Steve Ballmer promised, Microsoft is in a heavy acquisition phase. Last week, the company bought photo-sharing service WebFives. Today, Microsoft announced that it bought Multimap, a well-known U.K. online mapping services firm. Multimap offers location-based services that help users find local businesses, hotels and restaurants. It is perhaps best known for its business-to-business services that provide mapping, proximity searching, routing, aerial images with map overlay to other Websites. Its customers include travel sites, hotel sites, rental car sites and more. The online mapping service covers Europe, North America and Australia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft said that Multimap will be integrated into the company's Virtual Earth and Search teams in its Online Services Group (OSG). Microsoft's online searching service, Virtual Earth, already offers aerial images and proximity searching. However Multimap gives Microsoft an instant client base of business Website customers. Plus the two companies already had a relationship. Multimap had previously partnered with Microsoft to integrate Microsoft's MapPoint front-end software with Multimap's online services on the backend.

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