A nine year old girl, allegedly kidnapped by her grandmother, was found by investigators using a combination of Google Maps Street View and Satellite Technology.

Rose Maltais, 52, allegedly failed to return her granddaughter, Natalie Maltais, to the girl’s legal guardians in Athol, Massachusetts, according to the local newspaper the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.

The young girl was in possession of a mobile phone which was in use. The Investigators contacted the girl’s service provider and obtained the phones GPS coordinates.

Each time the phone was activated the service provider updated the investigators with the new coordinates. This allowed the investigators to track the progress of the pair.

When the pair appeared stationary the investigators used Google Street View to plot the coordinates and identify where they could be staying. There last location was close to a junction by a field. By Viewing online images of the area the investigators found a motel across from a field, they used Google to find the name of the hotel and called the Virginia Police.

Ms Maltais was arrested at the Budget Inn in Natural Bridge, Virginia. Yet again Google provides yet another invaluable service. Maybe Googles new tag line should be “Protect and Serve!”

It had to happen as some point, MySpace.com is teaming up with Internet search giant Google Inc. in a bid to extend MySpace’s exposure and to take on the rapid growth of their rival Facebook Inc.
Facebook’s unique social environment and user experience has seen the company grow at an astonishing rate. With over 130 million active users Facebook is the 4th most visited website in the World (comScore). It’s also the number 1 photo sharing application in the world (comScore), with over 10 billion photos uploaded to the site and over 30 million photos uploaded daily. The potential advertising exposure and revenue generated by the company is huge, but Facebook did not decide to partner with Google, the largest supplier of internet advertising content, they controversially went to Microsoft.

Myspace could be considered one of pioneers of Social Networking, established in 2004 and acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2005, MySpace currently has over 127 Million active users. It came to fame as part of the MTV generation, a place for bands, actors and film companies to showcase their work and interact with their fans.

The details of the alliance between Google and MySpace were released on Monday in Paris. Over the past seven months MySpace have been working on easier ways to allow their users to connect their MySpace accounts to other social networking sites. MySpace will be working with Google’s existing services to allow this to happen. Smaller sites with blogs and limited technical ability will be able to use Google Friend connect in the future, which will allow them to add social networking elements to their sites.

MySpace and Google started working together over a year ago on a service known as “Open Social” which was designed to compete against Facebook’s massively popular online software plug in repository. But the news of a new alliance must come as a shock to Facebook and their potential marketplace domination.

Article By Creative SEO -Search Engine Optimisation