Advertising has been part if Waze's plan for as long as I've been using it.

ncc1701v wrote:

dmcconachie wrote:Advertising has been part if Waze's plan for as long as I've been using it.

DM, from my exploration it seemed to me that in the beginning they were experimenting, seeing what they could monetize, and that advertising didn't begin in earnest until at least a year in. But that's not the main point. I find it hard to believe you don't know about FB's problems with privacy and data leakage.

I'm aware of the concerns people have. They're way overplayed though. No worse than Google, Apple or Amazon.

ncc1701v wrote:

dmcconachie wrote:I'm aware of the concerns people have. They're way overplayed though. No worse than Google, Apple or Amazon.

OK well, I guess we disagree. I believe my opinion is based on historical evidence. Thanks.

Show me the evidence then. And historical is the key, they lacked privacy granularity in the early days.

Why would I want any of that information from a satnav app?

If such a deal goes through, at that moment I delete Waze from my phone.

dcsohl wrote:If nothing changes operationally I'll probably be willing to stick around.

However, I expect FB to require tying your Waze account to your FB account, and I absolutely will not do that. Other changes, like heavier advertising and whatnot, I'll have to judge on a case-by-case basis.

About the same for me too. Not really liking the Taco Bell spam, but living with it. But if this acquistion makes me have to use FB, I'm out. (even then, the idea of my Waze data helping FB doesn't please me either)

I understand the capital is going to be nice for Waze, but I just hate FB.

dmcconachie wrote:People have to make a living, servers have to be paid for. Nothing is free.

And that is why I'm willing to put up with Taco Bell ads popping up when I'm at a traffic light and seeing Ramada and Taco Bell locations highlighted on my maps...

If this deal goes through and my map fills up with other businesses (which, with me living near a large indoor mall and a two-mile long strip of strip malls and stores), I'll go back to Google Navigator (or find something else)...

I also foresee facebook prioritizing "partner" gas stations on the "gas station" list.

I'm not sure that I'll leave if this deal happens... It would depend on the terms (read that as impact on the contributors).

I must note: Facebook does rely on end users to improve their product (e.g. points of interest).

jasomslon wrote:at least you can see what good is closed access to crowdsourced data good for. luckily i did not contribute a single poi/line/polygon to waze so no effort wasted there

You may not have explicitly contributed, but every mile/kilometer you drove helped Waze improve the map... anytime you drove through a turn that wasn't known allowed a map editor to make a correction.

I'm quite sure that if you use Google's option, you're most likely making the same contributions...

jasomslon wrote:sure. but contributing by using waze is only passive way of contribution, something like a by-product. i mean, you're contributing to google just by using gmail in the same way. i have no problems doing that - there's no other way around either way (unless you do proxying or stuff like that).

Distinction noted... I'm sure that Google Navigator, Apple Maps and Bing Maps all collect the same passive statistics from drivers [clearly Google does given the traffic heat-coding provided], but detected errors/issues go to backoffice staff to be addressed.

As an aside, I have a gmail account, but only because I have an Android-based phone; the only stats they get out of that is how much spam comes to unused mailboxes...

I agree with deeggo on all, especially 2.2. On the other hand: selling out to FB would, for Waze's founders, be the most sensible thing to do. And it would be the 1st time they do the most sensible thing.