Expanding its role in the mapping industry, Google announced early this morning that it had acquired European mapping company Endoxon.  Google plans to leverage the Swiss-based company on it's European mapping efforts and, according to the announcement on the Google Blog, will assign the newly acquired team to focus on Europe's mapping needs.

Endoxon will stop selling its previous products and will no longer develop new products outside the Googlespehere.  The company has said, however, that it will continue to support existing customers and all previous obligations.  Google acquired three of the European company's businesses and created a new company, Mappuls AG, to continue developing the products and services Google did not buy.

Google said that it plans to use Endoxon technology to improve its current geographically-based products, such as Google Maps and Google Earth.