MapBlast! was a web mapping service launched in the mid 1990s by Vicinity Corporation. It allowed website owners to incorporate maps in their own web pages, and was later syndicated across most major Web, wireless, handheld and interactive TV platforms including Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos, ATT Interactive and Palm, among others. By 2000, MapBlast was the #2 mapping site on the Web in terms of traffic having undergone a major redesign that was praised by the Wall Street Journal, PC Week and other leading publications. The team responsible for this redesign was led by David Cherner, Tad Goltra, Jerry Halstead, Eric Gottesman, Chris Golier, Matti Katajamaki, Julian Yang, Joe Como, Jun Boo, Dana Liu, Garner Moss, Tim Anderson, Adam Reek and Garner Moss.

Vicinity Corporation was founded in August 1995 with headquarters on 599 North Mathilda Avenue, Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...

. (37°23′30"N 122°01′50"W) Rama Aysola, Eddie Babcock, Timothy Bacci, Jim DiSanto were mentioned as co-founders. Harold J. Logan joined as CEO in 1996, and the company moved to 1135A San Antonio Road, Palo Alto

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

 (37°25′55"N 122°06′03"W), later with offices also in Berlin and Rome. By 1999, it had received funding from CMG@Ventures, Oak Investment Partners

Oak Investment Partners

Oak Investment Partners is a private equity firm focusing on venture capital investments in companies developing communications systems, information technology, new Internet media, healthcare services and retail....

, 21st Century Internet, and the Encompass Group. At this point, the only founder that remained was Bacci. CEO and president at that time was Emerick Woods. The management team included Scott Young (CTO), Dave Seltzer (CFO), Dinesh Wadhawan (VP-Sales), Greg Beasley (VP-Business Development), Eric Winkler (VP-Marketing), David Cherner (VP-Syndication), Mary Gavin (VP-Engineering), Mike Torgerson (VP-IT), Scott Shuda (General Counsel) and Elaine Hamilton (VP-HR). This management team completed a successful initial public offering in February 2000 managed by J.P. Morgan & Co.

J.P. Morgan & Co.

J.P. Morgan & Co. was a commercial and investment banking institution based in the United States founded by J. Pierpont Morgan and commonly known as the House of Morgan or simply Morgan. Today, J.P...

, Bear Stearns

Bear Stearns

The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. based in New York City, was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage, until its sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2008 during the global financial crisis and recession...

, and USB Piper Jaffray.

The company was acquired by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 in 2002 and the MapBlast service was closed down in August that year. The technologies have later been incorporated into services such as MSN Maps & Directions, Microsoft MapPoint

Microsoft MapPoint

Microsoft MapPoint is both a technology and a specific software program created by Microsoft that allows users to view, edit and integrate maps. The software and technology are designed to facilitate the geographical visualization and analysis of either included data or custom data...

 and Live Search Maps. Many of the localized search services now offered by Google and other leading companies were pioneered by Vicinity and MapBlast! in the late 1990s and early 2000s.