• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 5, 2014

Microsoft has agreed to a licensing partnership with Foursquare after making a $15 million investment in December that gives the company access to millions of location-based data points from individual check-ins.

Microsoft will license the places database for use in its products and services such as Bing, along with devices powered by Windows and the Windows Phone operating systems for the next four years. Foursquare recommendations will likely serve up in a mobile Bing search.

Foursquare estimates it has collected data on 45 million people participating in its community based on about 5 billion check-ins within the past five years.

In 2010, Microsoft reported that Bing would integrate Foursquare data into Maps, and then later in its sidebar. The company said it would build new tools in Bing Maps powered by Foursquare, using Microsoft's Silverlight technology to pull in the data.