Like the Beach Boys once sang, I get around … to various websites, but today was the first time I got around to WhereOnEarth, which hails from the UK.

Probably wouldn’t have gotten there either if not for reading that they are soon to be in Yahoo’s backpack, says the Y! Search Blog:

Whereonearth’s very talented team of software engineers and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) experts have worked hard to develop sophisticated technology that contains a unique combination of global data and software algorithms that make local search possible. Together, we’ll be able to provide the most geo-relevant information across all of Yahoo!’s products and services.

Have to take Yahoo’s word about how great WhereOnEarth’s services and engineers are on this one because the only demo I found was for something called Geocode on their site¹. Geocode was not what I’d call an impressive demo compared to something like say IPLocator but hey, Yahoo has made some really smart acquisitions this year. Also, making improvements on local search is a good thing.

Rafat Ali points out² that: “The company, which has 25 employees, has had a limited licensing deal with Yahoo since 2000.”

This further encourages me that Yahoo knows exactly what they are getting. As long as they didn’t pay anything outlandish for this …

Meanwhile, Eric Auchard from the Washington Post breaks down Yahoo’s positive third quarter report.³ Pictured above is today’s performance of YaHOO’s stock. Started out strong but seemed to go down in the later part of the trading day. Over the last six months or so it’s been somewhat flatline as opposed to Apple and Google which have both done very well.

We’ll see how 4th quarter works out for Yahoo as I think some of these acquisitions will start paying dividends as long as they don’t buy too many toys and then let them sit wastefully in the corner.

1. 11/25/08 4:50pm PST: source link removed: whereonearth.com/demos/geocode/ and not available via cache because robots.txt blocked. I don’t remember what the demo entailed to describe it today. [↩]
2. 11/25/08 4:55pm PST: original link 404 and the paidcontent.org–; search is not easy to find. Replaced with cache link but am happy to change if somebody points out to me where the link moved to. [↩]
3. 11/25/08: washingtonpost–; blocks robots.txt and there is no cache to link original source link: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801068_pf.html — mental note to be wary about linking going forward [↩]

Did this post make you go hmm?

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