Google Buys Waze In Pursuit Of Smarter Maps For Smartphones

Google has closed the long-anticipated deal by buying Israeli mapping startup Waze on Tuesday. The acquisition cost just over $1 Billion, as reported by sources. Waze's tagline reads 'Outsmarting Traffic, Together' but has Google outsmarted its rivals with this move? The online real-time mapping service is supposed to enhance the Google Maps experience for mobile and hence solidify its dominant position when it comes to competing with arch-rival, Apple. Waze has a base of 50 million consumers who actively contribute inputs to improve directions and display traffic. Waze uses satellite signals from users' smartphones to generate maps and traffic data, which it then shares with other users. Google has already revamped its Maps to include features such as Bicycle tracks, Best routes and Traffic overview. The acquisition of Waze only complements the recent changes that Google has implemented.

Four-year-old Waze was founded by Ehud Shabtai, a software engineer with a degree in philosophy and computer science from Tel Aviv University, who purposed a GPS software to reflect real-time conditions quickly to its users. Google has announced that Waze's product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now. With more and more takers for smartphones and tablets, and Maps being among the five most-used applications on mobile devices, it's sure an investment keeping in mind the paradigm shift. Social applications are becoming increasingly useful in an interconnected world and Waze caters to that aspect by bringing crowdsourcing to Google Maps. I guess we can stop depending on the Radio for traffic updates from hereon, now that so completely obsolete it has become.

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