At waze, our vision is to work in cooperation with drivers worldwide to create the world's first live driving map, providing users with the real-time road intelligence they need for better everyday driving.
Waze is a social mobile application that enables drivers to build and use real-time road intelligence. The service includes constantly-updated road maps, alerts on traffic and accidents, and data providing users with the fastest route to get to wherever they need to go.
Map and traffic updates are automatically collected and generated as users drive with waze activated, but drivers can also actively report and update other users with what's happening on the road including accident alerts, police traps, weather hazards, cheap gas offers and more. And the best part? Because the map and all of its content is driver-generated, waze is completely free for users.
At waze, we encourage developers to build additional applications for drivers using our live maps. We provide access to the map and the map data itself as well as our real time API. Please check our terms of service for more information and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
The idea for waze originated years ago, when Ehud Shabtai, a software engineer with a degree in Philosophy and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, was given a PDA with an external GPS device pre-installed with navigation software. Ehud's initial excitement quickly gave way to disappointment - the product didn't reflect the dynamic changes that characterize real conditions on the road.
An experienced open-source developer with deep experience of Web 2.0 applications, Ehud took matters into his own hands and started to build the first dynamic traffic platform which combined GPS, open-source software and a community of drivers. His goal? To accurately reflect the road system, state of traffic and all the information relevant to drivers at any given moment.
This mapping project, named Freemap, began officially in 2006 and was enthusiastically received by the community of drivers in Israel. Two years later, Ehud got together with the entrepreneurs Uri Levine and Amir Shinar, and together they founded waze (formerly called Linqmap) which is funded by the following VC entities:
- Blue Run Ventures - http://www.brv.com
- Magma Venture Partners - http://www.magmavc.com
- Vertex Venture Capital - http://www.vertexvc.com