CoStar Group, commercial real estate's largest data provider, and Google are in talks about integrating building information with Google Earth mapping service, and preliminary discussions have taken place with Yahoo as well, reports the Mercury News (via SearchEngineLowdown). "We have licensed some content to Google already," said Andrew Florance, chief executive officer of CoStar Group. The deal is Google's initial foray into the realm of commercial real estate.

CoStar sends out teams in specially equipped vans to photograph buildings, use lasers to measure them, and calculate their exact centers for mapping. It tracks other data as well on commercial buildings in 80 of the biggest markets in the U.S., plans to expand to the top 200 markets, and also runs operations in the U.K.

One possible application, according to an analyst, is that those in the commercial real estate industry could search, for example, '"which restaurants sold this year in San Jose," then click on the search results to see pictures, who the buyers and sellers were, and how much they sold for.