Google has bought Waze!

[vince1612]

Google Blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2013/06/google-maps-and-waze-outsmarting.html

Google Maps and Waze, outsmarting traffic together

Posted: Tuesday, June 11, 2013
We’ve all been there: stuck in traffic, frustrated that you chose the wrong route on the drive to work. But imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow travelers ahead of you, calling out “fender bender…totally stuck in left lane!” and showing faster routes that others are taking.

To help you outsmart traffic, today we’re excited to announce we’ve closed the acquisition of Waze. This fast-growing community of traffic-obsessed drivers is working together to find the best routes from home to work, every day.

The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now. We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities.

We’ll also work closely with the vibrant Waze community, who are the DNA of this app, to ensure they have what’s needed to grow and prosper.

The Waze community and its dedicated team have created a great source of timely road corrections and updates. We welcome them to Google and look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world.

Posted by Brian McClendon, Vice President, Geo

Waze Team forum post :

Waze joins Google
by noam » 11 Jun 2013, 17:30

Dear Wazers,
I am excited to announce today that we have accepted an offer to join Google. I’d like to share some information about what this means for Waze.

Larry Page, Brian McClendon and the Google Maps teams have been following our progress closely and are excited about what we’ve accomplished. They share our vision of a global mapping service, updated in real time by local communities, and wish to help us accelerate. We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world.

Nothing practical will change here at Waze. Waze will maintain our community, brand, service and organization – the community hierarchy, responsibilities and processes will not change. The same Waze people will continue to collaborate with you, and we will continue to innovate our product and services, making them more social, functional and helpful for everyday drivers. Our employees, managers, founders and I are all committed to our vision for many years to come.

Why not stay completely independent? We asked ourselves: “Will Waze still be a fun project to participate in, and a fun place to work at, as a stand-alone public company?” Choosing the path of an IPO often shifts attention to bankers, lawyers and the happiness of Wall Street, and we decided we’d rather spend our time with you, the Waze community. Google is committed to help us achieve our common goal and provide us with the independence and resources we need to succeed. We evaluated many options and believe Google is the best partner for Waze, our map editors, area managers, champs and nearly 50 million Wazers globally.

Together, we can accelerate our mission to outsmart traffic. We will continue to make a real impact on drivers globally, helping them save time and money while making everyone’s daily commute a bit more efficient and fun.

So, it’s back to work for us with some great new colleagues and resources to enhance our project. Thank you for your participation in shaping Waze to what it is today, and we look forward to continuing to build out Waze together with you.

See you on the road,

The Waze Team

Questions on what will change?

Re: Waze joins Google
by shirlig » 11 Jun 2013, 19:03

Hi guys!
These are very exciting news indeed!
We’ll do our best to address all your questions here.

Basically, as Noam mentioned - nothing really changes in our workflow and in our work together.

[i]enhket wrote:
How will waze and google merge their maps? Will we still have to edit?

This will waze to grow even faster! Congratulations again[/i]

Waze maps and Googles maps stay separated and it is not allowed to use google maps data to edit Waze maps.
However - there is going to be a significant focus on the enhancement of the map editor and new tools will be available to us - yes, that includes google’s aerials and street view !

I am very happy that it’s not Facebook !

[McFloyd]

@vince1612

I am very happy that it’s not Facebook !

Woah, Google kauft waze? Ob sich, wie versprochen, nichts an waze ändern wird? Wir werden es sehen.
Auf jeden Fall bin ich froh darüber, dass es Google und nicht Apple ist!

[vince1612]

Yes we will see

Apple Maps ? :o :o :o Yes we’re also lucky it was not them!

[SaymN]

Im WIKI steht ja, dass Google Maps für die Bearbeitung der Waze Karte nicht erlaubt sei.
Gillt denn dies jetzt nachdem Google Waze gekauft hat immer noch?

[omba_de]

@SaymN

Im WIKI steht ja, dass Google Maps für die Bearbeitung der Waze Karte nicht erlaubt sei.
Gillt denn dies jetzt nachdem Google Waze gekauft hat immer noch?

Ja.
Wobei direkt nicht erlaubt stimmt so nicht.
Du darfst kein Script verwenden was die Daten “herüberspielt”.
Zum checken nehme ich die google Maps schon her. Wie wohl viele hier

[SaymN]

Ah so ist das… Wohl bisschen missverstanden.

[argus-cronos]

Die letzte Aussage vom Staff war klar: G nicht verwenden um die Karten zu bearbeiten, wenn ein Ort aussieht wie bei G wirds evtl. mal ein Problem geben. Andererseits sind wir sowieso aktueller.

http://world.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=51811&start=10#p466701