Struggling location data startup Foursquare Labs, Inc. has signed a new deal with Uber, Inc. that will see Uber users being able to book rides without knowing the address of the location they wish to visit.

Under the deal, Foursquare is supplying Points of Interest (POI) data to Uber, including the names and locations of restaurants to local businesses, in a global, multi-year agreement.

Foursquare, if you don’t remember the company, was founded in 2009 and was one of the earliest and most popular check-in apps, in part due to a gamified achievement system that allowed users to gain the title of “mayor” if they checked into a location more than other users.

Bizarrely, and perhaps somewhat controversially, Foursquare split that functionality off into a separate app called “Swarm” which until last year had no gamification, while the original Foursquare app focused on restaurant and business reviews, a la Yelp but with far fewer users.

Despite its foibles, the value proposition for Foursquare became its location data, and today the company provides it to companies including Apple, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Pinterest, Inc., Samsung Electronic Co. Ltd, Microsoft Corp., Yahoo, Inc., WeChat, and Garmin.

“Foursquare will enable Uber to customize, improve and increase the breadth of our non-personal POI location data to enhance Uber’s rider and driver experience,” Foursquare’s Vice President of Business Development Mike Harkey said in a post on Medium. “Also, these modifications will also be incorporated into Foursquare’s venue database going forward. It’s a natural fit for us to partner with Uber as a POI supplier.”

Google move

The news that Uber has signed a deal with Foursquare does come as somewhat of a surprise given Uber already has a location data supplier, and that’s Google, Inc.

While Uber will still be using Google Maps, the move to obtain data from Foursquare could be an initial step by the ridesharing startup to disengage itself from Google and its services over time; Uber unsuccessfully bid for Nokia Corp.’s HERE mapping service in 2015, indicating it was at the very least trying to find alternatives to Google services.

For Foursquare the deal is a good one, but will probably do little to address is tanking valuation.

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