http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html
One would guess that they’ll move towards optimizing commutes, but there certainly are privacy concerns about not notifying the user that this is what they’re doing.
I’ll still use waze, since I like being part of the community and the social aspects of the app as well. Keep on truckin’, waze!
Since google maps can’t keep traffic data running without my android device getting “low on memory, traffic has been turned off” errors, waze is an easy choice for me.
Plus waze has a better community elements. Allowing chit-chat, twitter and the ability to edit maps is a huge win that google hasn’t even approached yet.
Go Waze Team!
Waze has the growing community, but Google has maps+sat AND a plausible worldwide community ready to jump on the wagon if they just push it a little.
Remember that people prefer what they already have (Google), if the “new thing” doesn’t have enough advantages to motivate them to switch. And when I say “enough” I mean “many”.
Waze is a long-term project, in my opinion it will need probably another 6-12 months to really become useful and mainstream. That’s quite a long time in web terms, and Google can take advantage of that.
Waze has chit-chat. How long before Google integrates GoogleChat into Latitude?
Waze has twitter. I don’t see Google going that way, but that doesn’t mean they technically can’t.
Waze has active editing. Google has resources and money to acquire data from whoever they want, and they can introduce passive editing just the way they’re doing with traffic.
I’m not saying we’ve lost, we’re far away from that. But Waze’s future is not as clear and bright as before. The key here is to differentiate.
Trapster has the police alerts, OpenStreetMap has editing, Google has traffic… what does Waze have to offer in order to win users from these already-established platforms?
At least for now, Google’s new traffic reporting that you are talking about does not work on the iPhone, whereas Waze does. Now if Google can convince Apple to allow Latitude as an App, or if Google releases this to owners of jailbroken iPhones, that would change things at least here in the US.
Since google has already entered the app store, and they are a US company, they are unlikely to release an app on jailbroken devices. Apple would quickly pull all their apps from the app store and terminate their agreement. Unless they brought a legal challenge… I don’t know if that is even worth attempting, I doubt they could win that.
It works on the iPhone, in that you can actually see the real-time traffic data (you just have to zoom in close enough to see it on a street-level). What it doesn’t do on the iPhone is actually collect data. All of the crowdsourcing data is being received from other users, not iPhone users.
I can confirm, been working since day 1 for me on almost every road in Houston.
Google’s traffic isn’t working in Europe. Waze can’t be used to navigate there but more and more users use it and traffic warnings start to work. 1-0 for Waze @ this side of the ocean.
For countries (including Canada, where I’ve been wazing a fair bit since late September) this could be a WazeKiller - even if GOOG is surreptitiously collecting Google Mobile stats from users (as per stuff buried deep in their TOS) - considering that we are building Waze maps entirely from scratch here in Canada.
For fellow Canadian Wazers, you know how challenging (frustrating) this can be, it’s going to be a key issue in driving and maintaining adoption amongst new Wazers in locations outside the US.
Rob
The simple fact that we can have updated maps in Waze in a day or two to reflect the real-world is a huge plus in my mind. The fact that I can do it myself is also huge. Reporting a map problem to Google that might be fixed in a year, or never because they say “that’s not our problem, we got that data from <whoever> and it’s up to them to fix it, so why don’t you go away and go report it to them and leave us alone” is another plus for Waze. Sure, it’s starting from a hole because we have to make our own maps here. That’s also huge, unfortunately in the other column. But some dedicated people can make some huge progress in that department in a short amount of time with not a lot of effort. I’ve got the main highway done for half of Vancouver Island already. With a small amount of streets in Victoria in progress, a very small amount in Chemainus, a little bit more in Ladysmith, a fair amount done in Nanaimo, and almost every single street in Nanoose, Parksville, Qualicum, Errington, and Coombs so far. And I enjoy doing it. Well, when I’m not fighting the server, hahaha. 
Does Waze have competition? Of course. But for me, and I’m sure a lot of other current and future users, Waze offers more than enough as-is.
My dad’s retired, living down in Costa Rica now. I showed him what I had been doing in Waze when he was up here to visit a couple weeks ago. “Wow. That would be perfect for mapping our area down in Costa Rica. We don’t have any maps around there that are worth using.” So now he’s considering getting an iPhone for no other reason than to make some maps for himself and others that he works with down there that could sorely use maps around where they are. What would/could Google do for him? Not a darn thing.