“Google officially announced this morning that yes, it has closed on the Waze acquisition, and yes, Google and Waze will be ‘outsmarting traffic together,'” John Koetsier reports for VentureBeat.
“While Google did not confirm the purchase price, it is likely $1.3 billion,” Koetsier reports. “Google apparently won the bidding war, if there was one, as Facebook and Apple were also rumored to be bidding for Waze. Facebook is perhaps somewhat believable, but Apple was likely never in the running seriously, except perhaps to bid up the price that Google eventually had to pay.”
Koetsier reports, “The reason? Apple’s entire mapping infrastructure is incompatible with Waze, and would require years of integration and migration to build out a combined codebase and stable integrated product — unless Apple would just throw out all the code it has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars building. And that was unlikely in the extreme. If indeed Apple is still in the market for a mapping acquisition, the only likely candidates are TomTom and Garmin.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Google nears $1 billion deal for Waze – June 10, 2013
Google, like Facebook, in talks to buy Waze for $1 billion; Apple not part of discussions – May 24, 2013
Apple not buying Waze, say multiple sources – January 3, 2013
Deleting Waze app in 3.. 2.. 1..
No thanks to Waze; don’t need to be tracked by the one and only. 😁
Waze might be useful in places where road signage is horrible, but in the US, it mostly not useful. Plus the cartoonish interface is annoying. I don’t believe Google bought $1billion of IP that they couldn’t create on their own
I am NEVER updating.
Future versions will definately include Google Spyware.
Deleted!
Google was probably pissed that they couldn’t make this announcement yesterday. I’m happy inside knowing they probably wasted a lot of energy trying to make that happen.
Acquisitions with this price to value ratio are symptomatic of a company desperate for new ideas and poor money management discipline.
This is why we can’t have nice things. 🙁
Yeah, they’re going away. I noticed at yesterday’s keynote that they mentioned Bing results for Siri, I think. Hopefully more Google will go away from the iPhone etc.
Waze might be a good social app but with navigation I find it hopeless. At least with Apple Maps and Google Maps I can get to my relatives for Christmas. Waze would get me totally lost.
Deleted today from all devices including my Facebook account.
I’ve been a power user of Waze for the last year and I have loved it. But Google cannot be trusted with my data due to their political leanings. While Apple has its leftist tilt, I’ve never felt that Apple would collaborate with a Democrat admin as a way of punishing that admin’s enemies.
But I don’t feel that way about Google. I have no doubt that Google does data mining on behalf of Obama and his comrades no matter what Page says. Waze simply collects too much info about citizens to trust it to an entity as untrustworthy as Google.
And I would feel the same way if Google was owned by the Koch brothers (although they are WAAAY more ethical than Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, et. al.
Good bye Waze and all my points. The one true feature I will miss is the ability to have the direction go to my Bluetooth earpiece. Does any know if the voice direction of Apples Map can be sent via Bluetooth? Do not need everyone in the car to know I am lost, how embarrassing.
Just turn the volume up.
Sounds like a good feature. Write in the Apple forums. I might get some tips. You can also add it as a suggestion to Apple. There is a suggestion feature on their support page somrwhere.
Ha ha ha !
Way to go google, blow 1.3 billion on a useless pice of crap. They really are desperate for ideas, love seeing them waste money on stuff they’ll shutter in a couple of years anyway.
Any company that spends $1.3Bn on a start up is heading for Myspace irrelevance sooner or later. If they have that much money to waste, perhaps they could find some to pay their proper taxes – and not expect everyone else to do so for them.
Apple’s policy of keeping their hands in their pockets when ‘confetti money’ is being thrown around will serve them well.