Here are my thoughts on the possibility of Apple purchasing Waze.

First of all, I am not totally negative to this idea. I could see some benefits to this action, but I could also see some negative infractions from this.

• Android support would not go away. For at least the past year, Apple has been trying to destroy the image of Google. What a better way to do it than aggressively pointing to an alternative to Google Maps while doing something that Google doesn't currently offer such as traffic reporting. I could actually see support for the Windows phone as it already has support for Blackberry, Android, and Apple.

• I could easily see the editing by the masses be eliminated. In some ways I am ok with this, in a lot of ways I am not. The some ways are that it may stop people from making a complete mess of the maps. It may also start offering jobs to people who may like to do this for a living (sign me up please). I have fears to this because in a lot of ways the maps are good because of the masses editing, and in ways they are bad when an outside group that doesn't make the drives makes the changes. I have had complete road changes reverted to the original maps because the areal image shows different that the actual new road and these changes were done by an IGN editor that I know could not have possibly been in the area ... My fear is that we will be replaced by foolish editors such as these

• At least the good thing I can say is that while Apple is a very profitable company, I believe that the 750 Million that is said to be the least Waze would like to accept could easily be too much for Apple to consider the purchase and the project would still stay in the hands of Waze and the community that helps fund it. That being said, I am going to say that Apple, with a proper plan, could easily improve this product and could turn this application into a major revenue building app

petervdveen wrote:I don't think you really have to wory about this.
This rumor gets back every now and then.

It does. But why is Yael putting this on Facebook then, without comment?

It's not just an Operating System though, it's a walled garden.

Can't see it myself. We've been here before.

jmp316 wrote:And then I saw this:

http://bgr.co/WmYV0j

That's just a summary of the Techcrunch article.

Poopstick wrote:Investors are indeed the real threat. You can't refuse a return on investment which represents your investment 10 folds.


Edit: selling would be IMHO a mistake. Apple is past (if not a dead man walking), crowdsourcing still has a long way to go with the newer generations which were born after Internet has become widespread.

Aren't you contradicting yourself there?

Private equity investors will happily turn down a 10x ROIC if future returns are estimated in excess of that. Just ask Ronald Wayne! In this case I'm pretty sure it's less than half of that anyway. $67m of investment vs Waze's supposed acceptable figure of $750m. Pretty sure Waze will have retained more than 50% of the company during funding! Which would also leave the ultimate decision in the hands of the Waze board presuming they didn't hand majority voting rights away which would be unusual if not unheard of.

petervdveen wrote:Well.. Just give every wazer a dollar for every edit and I'm okey with it

Not sure even Apple's $200bn war chest could fund Mapcat on that basis!

jmp316 wrote:

Poopstick wrote:Alleluia http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/01/03/appl ... ying-waze/

Interesting. Maybe just some ploy by waze to get more users?

Nah, they don't need to employ tactics like that. M&A rumours like this are daily occurrences for both mega companies and start-ups alike. Not the first time Waze's name has been involved, won't be the last.

I Just hope it doesn't happen.

Waze has such a good thing going on. It would be a shame for it to be just killed off.

Waze's assets are both its map and its community. As for the community - its value is estimated based on some rule of the thumb, calculating expected revenue from advertising etc. Yes, each and every one of us is worth $5 and it quickly adds up.

The other asset that Waze holds is its map. After 3 years of work there are patches on the world that have an exceptional good map, so good that its usability is better than any commercial map. But really - most of the map worldwide is still unusable. It will take many more years to get those areas in a shape where you can expect a useful route.

Online communities can fall apart within weeks or months, history shows that selling the ownership/changing tactics can accelerate that process. Waze's community - held together by 0.1% of its userbase - seems exceptionally brittle and it does not really help that 2/3 of us are on Android.

If Apple wants the map but looses the community in the process they are in for a few unpleasant surprises. They must keep the community alive if they ever want to harvest the maps, and Apple has a notorious bad reputation with social things. On the other hand it is understandable that Waze would sell; getting offered 300 times last years revenue is more than many of us could withstand.

Do I have to remind you all that tomtom's downfall started with the €250M acquisition of, what was it, TeleAtlas?