My wife just told me that Google bought Waze for 1.1B.
Congratulations Ehud and clan!
Is there an article? How does she know?
She subscribes to news alerts, probably from the Google Tool Bar.
There is an article here… but it is not absolute:
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/09/looks-like-now-google-is-buying-waze-for-1-3-billion/
and
I’m happy that google is the buyer not FB. Also, I’m glad Ehud and Team stay in and at location. Hope for the Best.
Congrats to Ehud and The Team.
There are a lot of articles posted today with varying amounts.
What a shame. I see no huge advantage to any of the three major buyers. I despise Facebook and refuse to have an account, so I go bye-bye. Apple buys - could remain autonomous, and actually be the replacement for the awful Apple map app. Google buys - it could remain autonomous, but the only advantage here would be that we could actually use Google maps legally to update streets.
The big benefit of waze over other software is the more accurate arrival time based on my speed and road conditions. The GPS DVD in my Tundra is awful, not accurate at all, and no way to update. Waze is more intelligent.
What will I do with my extra time? Oh, the agony…
Oh well, guess I’ll just put the car charger away. At least I won’t have as many bruises on my arm from my wife hitting me for inputting problems on waze. I’ll just have them from inputs to gasbuddy.
I’ve personally enjoyed Waze as a standalone option for well over a year, but congrats (if things become official) for the Waze team. It’s obviously unfortunate that this will likely mean the numerous edits will be for naught in the long run.
Hypothetical positives and negatives going forward…
Negatives of the Google Buyout
- Waze maps edits likely being scrapped entirely
- The loss of a visually superior navigation client (compare with Google Map’s navigation mode)
- The loss of live reporting (unless they adopt the Waze user reporting mindset, Google hasn’t done anything involving user reporting in relation to the maps other than rating points of interest)
Positives of the Google Buyout - Integration of Waze client engine for rendering navigation routes (compare with Google Maps and see how there’s far less visual clutter now that the Waze client suppresses nearby road names)
- Better POI searching (given it will be via the Google Maps app, but Google does have a more robust listing points of interest and with geo locations that will give more precise directions to a destination)
- Editor elements making their way to Google Mapmaker
- Integrating aspects of Waze (maybe user reporting and live user traffic data) in with Google Maps
- The addition of the talented Waze team with the Google Maps team
There’s lots more positives and negatives I’m sure to be factored… it will be interesting to play the waiting game to see how this all shakes out.
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
This really is a bummer for me. The three best things about Waze:
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Ability to edit maps. New road closure in my area? Make the map change, mobile client is routing around it the next day. Awesome. I hope this is one of the far superior features that Google is planning to integrate with this acquisition. I have not used Map Maker, so I’m not sure how quickly user map edits are integrated into the mobile nav client. Anyone have experience with this?
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Real-time road speed & incident data. Waze has routed me better than Google, hands down. Part of this can be attributed to point #1 and the quick response to road closures. If I’m in a major metropolitan area, and a nav client tries to route me through a road that has been closed for 2 months, that’s a deal breaker. (Unless I can make a map change and have it go live within days!) :mrgreen:
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The friendly competition of the points system. It’s fun to make map improvements that benefit users and see yourself climbing the ranks.
So overall I’m worried about the future of Waze. And I feel less excited to continue with the cleanup of my neighborhood, with the possibility it’s all for nothing. 
How’s everybody else feeling?
I am very excited about this buy-out if true. I like the concept of Waze a lot, but after lots of use in a variety of different circumstances and locations, it just seems like it will have a very hard time growing beyond a “commuter solution” in the major cities. I just don’t feel like it can achieve critical mass beyond the biggest cities.
I live in a city of 275,000 in a metro area of about 550,000. The Waze data is marginal at best. I was almost always the one entering data like hazards instead of being the recipient of other’s entries. The traffic on the freeways was pretty good but the side road traffic was almost always wrong - stale basically. It would include traffic on meaningless little residential streets but miss congestion on major divided 4 lanes arterials. We suffered from massive flooding last month, closing hundreds of streets and over 30 highways. I could find none of those closures entered into Waze by other users.
I love the idea that Waze learned from my personal driving and adapted road segment speeds, etc. I hope that Google includes that technology in the merged solution someday. I like the social aspects of warning other drivers of issues - there just aren’t enough users. Same problem as Dash Navigation. Great idea - couldn’t achieve critical mass except in major cities.
I greatly prefer the Google client over Waze both from a UI perspective as well as functionality, integration with the overall smartphone apps, and especially Google Now. Waze not being impeded into the OS in terms of being a handler app for clicking on addresses in other apps was always a huge drawback to it from my perspective. Google not yet doing automatic traffic rerouting is insane but that is coming this summer. That is one of the main reasons why I kept coming back to Waze under certain circumstances.
Finally, from a POI perspective, the biggest thing that I like about Google Navigation is the placement of POI’s relative to their exact building location versus simply their street address. This, combined with Google’s inclusion of terminal roads helps tremendously when trying to find a specific POI in the midst of a very dense retail area for example.
I think there are definitely benefits to the Waze app that will make Google better. I also believe that this is a defensive purchase as well - it was worth it for Google to take Waze away from others.
dont sell! geez, these giants are annoying.
It’s a done deal.
I don’t think the editing function will ever go away; in fact have you guys signed up for Google’s new map editing feature? Sure, the points scheme and things may change but it can only be good.
If anything it makes perfect sense for Google to buy Waze for so many reasons. Traffic update was abandoned by Google awhile back but now it’ll be back and integrated. More data from Google means Waze will be accurate in finding various locations. Perhaps features of adding landmarks will probably go away in that sense as Google would have much bigger data already. That’s only a guess though. Who knows how these two maps will be integrated.
I’m just thankful it didn’t get bought out by Facebook…too early to speculate but I’m pretty optimistic with G buying W.
I don’t want google to profit from my data, is there a way I can delete all my tracklogs and data from Waze or do I need to put in a support request?
I don’t believe that this is official yet. In any case if this goes through there are two things for sure:
- Google is paying a HUGE, HUGE premium for Waze
- The Waze investors and private shareholders are making a HUGE return on their investment
Looks at this, supposedly Ehud’s stake in Waze is valued at $78 million USD if this acquisition closed at $1.3 billion USD.
http://www.jpost.com/Business/Business-News/Google-set-to-acquire-Israeli-app-Waze-for-13b-315941
By the way, to those of you thinking that you own the map edits you have contributed, think again. You are making the Waze investors rich, not yourself.
You may want to read through the terms of service and the privacy policy again.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk 2
Waze wasn’t profiting from your data? I’d say that customer data was worth about 99% of the $1B+ windfall they are about to receive.
Waze is a for profit company, not a non-profit helping the world avoid traffic. It’s all about them and their free labor pool aka. the Waze Map Editors and Waze Community.
Sorry, I almost forgot. Waze does pay the IGN editors for their excellent contributions to the map!
I think a lot of editors will feel apprehensive like you. Seems perfectly normal. I wouldn’t worry about it too much until Waze addresses the editing community. Uncertainty will make people wonder if they should keep going. I would just continue as normal and have fun with it!
I’d rather have Google buy it then Facebook.
Mabye then we can get some updated aerials imaging for editing?! Right now it’s very outdated. I think the last google map updated aerials in my area is around jan/feb of this year.