After talks with Facebook fell through, Google have swooped in and offered $1 billion+ to acquire social map startup Waze. Waze is a popular mapping app for smartphones and tablets that relies on user-submitted data for locations of venues. The company is based in Israel. Over the last several months, it’s been reported that Apple, Google, and Facebook were all interested in buying Waze. Facebook was the latest company reportedly in deep talks to buy Waze, but the deal didn’t go through.
According to many online sources, the move is a done deal and would keep Facebook from directly competing with Google in a very important area – mapping.
As part of the deal, Waze will reportedly keep its offices in Israel and team in place. Google is supposedly offering all cash, but no official comments have been made from either company. Waze is best described as “a crowd-sourced, mobile-oriented navigation device for drivers that rely on information provided by its 47 million members to populate its maps”.
When reviewing the implication of advertising in the matter – we can consider that these following advantages took place by Google officials:
- More data points for location-based advertising through Google.
- Google Maps will merge easily with the current Waze platform.
- Waze may run on the Google mapping, which is much more robust.
