Google has officially acquired social mapping company Waze in order to better improve its map service. Google maps has recently undertaken the task of redesigning the aging map’s. Waze is a crowd sourced real time traffic updates. Google finally acquired the Israeli startup, which it hopes will help drivers use its services to outsmart gridlock.
There’s no official word on how much Google paid for Waze, although TechCrunch notes that recent speculation pegged the price at around $1 billion. Reports that the two companies have finally inked a deal are particularly bad news for Facebook and Apple, which had both eyed the startup previously.
“The Waze community and its dedicated team have created a great source of timely road corrections and updates,” wrote Brian McClendon, Google’s VP of all Geo projects. “We welcome them to Google and look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world.”
The data mapping company will be able to bring better traffic and it could be installed on each Android handset. This would give Google so much data it would allow the company to improve their maps offering, and stand out from the crowded market right now. However this could turn out to create more privacy issues for the company. Tell us what you think about Google buying this startup.