“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.
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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