Waze joins Google

[kpouer]

I don't think there is a "real" situation that is different from what we know.
Waze will remains the same for at least a few years, and you never know what will happens after.
Companies change their strategy, they may have an idea now of what they want to do with waze in the future but it may be completely different in two years.

[kpouer]

When they bought Youtube, Youtube did not earn any money and it was spending probably much more money than Waze.
Google had their Google Video. The difference is that Google video was crap.
For me what is better in Google Maps is:

Livemap of course
POI
Search
Reliability (it never give me a timeout when doing a search or a route)
Speed (they find routes quickly)
Map data

What is better in Waze:
All social features (sharing danger, accidents)
The map that is updated everyday
Traffic

So waze has a lot to get from Google, and Google has also many features from waze that are interesting for them.
They can learn from our editing community (because MapMaker is not exactly friendly, you change one thing and it takes one month of talk to know if it is accepted or not) and many other things.
And Google Maps would be a great basemap for many countries where there is no basemap.

[kpouer]

It really depends on the places, details may be wrong, but if you look at waze far from urban area, often roads have no names and even are one way because one wazer did drive once on it. On Google Maps most of the time roads are named and often the name is ok.
And in many countries Google has a basemap much better than any other map
For example Agadez in Niger:
https://maps.google.fr/?ll=16.961576,7. ... 3&t=m&z=14
They have streets (no name but better than nothing)
On bing they only have highways http://binged.it/1bwZjB4
And on yahoo nothing.
And in many non occidental places it is like that.
In fact I don't know how they did it, is it done manually or something like OCR on aerial pictures, I don't know.

[kpouer]

It seems it depends on where, I have a lot of places where the livemap was not updated since at least 7 or 8 months

[kpouer]

That's very interesting news Shirli, about keeping Bing aerials, I'm sure it will be possible, if the people of OSM are able to do it, you can also do it

[lakeyboy]

My opinion is things will stay as they are, at least in the short term. Google will use it's resources (servers, money, advertising, street view, aerial imagery) to help Waze and vice versa (traffic reports, and conditions, road data, traffic speeds etc). I can see google maintaining the stock standard Google Maps app for the average user who is usually 'standing still' and keep Waze in it's current form for people who are 'moving'.

Congratulations to all involved and I'm glad the deal was done with Google instead of the other tech giants. I look forward to what future developments may come!

[leocylau]

Really exiciting. I used Google Map and Waze for a while and love them all. Looking forward to bringing us new features, accruate and stable map.

I used to update and correct waze's map and compare with Google map. I also report to Google once I found map issue.

By the way, does it mean there is no more copyright issue to use Google map on Waze?

[leocylau]

arrrh...shirling answer my query 1 min ago

[leocylau]

I also hope for Google aerials!

If we can keep the bing map and have a function to swap between 2 even better

[leocylau]

Livemap of course
POI
Search
Reliability (it never give me a timeout when doing a search or a route)
Speed (they find routes quickly)
Map data

And Street View, Google Earth, 3D modelling, etc