Open-Source Developers Surprise Google in Local-Search Market Woking, England, 14 October 2003 - The Abrahamson Brothers today announced that their open-source local-search solution, downloadable from Mobilemaps.com, now allows the Web community to participate in generating local advertising revenue. This is stealing an unexpected lead on the giant of traditional search, Google, which said its own "Search by Location" is still a "work in progress." This new type of local search that combines a search engine and a map viewer is described by the Abrahamson Brothers as a "nearby engine". Nearby engines are designed to save time for Internet users trying to find nearby information, by presenting the location of search results on a map. "The open-source Mobilemaps will come as a welcome surprise to the local-search market," said Philip Abrahamson. "Its free distribution will rapidly lead to a global community using Mobilemaps that will be difficult for any one company to compete against." The Mobilemaps nearby engine is immediately available for Web Portals to freely deploy and earn money from. The Abrahamson Brothers have been quietly testing Mobilemaps on the Internet for the last three years, but are only now publicly announcing their product to the search market following completion of their local advertising system that serves geo-targeted advertisements, called "NearbyAds". NearbyAds can be positioned to precise street addresses, allowing search advertisers who run local businesses to attract relevant local customers, rather than irrelevant, national Internet users. This saves advertisers time and money, and will attract a wider range of businesses to search advertising. Web Portals hosting NearbyAds benefit because they can now sell the same keyword across all their geographies and not just to a limited selection of international advertisers. "Using NearbyAds, each Web Portal will earn revenue in its own chosen geography," said Peter Abrahamson. "However, because Mobilemaps is open source, it does not lock Web Portals into its technology or advertising service. This ensures each Web Portal's future is in its own hands, instead of a proprietary vendor's." A Mobilemaps search of California is demonstrated at http://www.mobilemaps.com. The Mobilemaps nearby engine is free to download from http://www.mobilemaps.com/download/download.html Distinguishing technical features of Mobilemaps include: - Full interaction with a map interface, providing a zoom into specific results and the ability to easily change the search location - Scalability of the spatial index that allows proximity sorting and does not limit searches to an arbitrary fixed area - Intelligent matching of locations to home pages, even if street address locations are only found on other pages of a site, helping consolidate results - Location recognition within a single search box input, offering seamless integration with search boxes of traditional search engines - Compatibility with any Open Geographic Information Systems Consortium (or OGC) industry standard map service or server Open-source software benefits from a collaborative development effort which has been known to promote rapid improvements and competitive advantage over proprietary software. Mobilemaps stands on the shoulders of other open-source software such as Perl, MySQL, Apache, and Mapserver. It runs under Linux, Windows, and various Unix operating systems. Mobilemaps.com is operated by High Country Software Ltd of Woking, England, an open-source development company run by the Abrahamson Brothers, Philip and Peter, who are New Zealanders living in the UK. References 1. Mobilemaps http://www.mobilemaps.com 2. Google's Search by Location http://labs.google.com/location 3. "Search by Location is a work in progress." http://labs.google.com/help/FAQ_location.html 4. NearbyAds http://www.mobilemaps.com/advertising/advertising.html Contact Information Philip Abrahamson UK tel: 011-44-131-228-4681 philip@mobilemaps.com