It's Official: Google Buys Waze for a Billion to Enhance Google Maps

[Linda Buquet]

After much speculation by media over the past couple weeks, Google officially announced the acquisition of Waze, a crowd sourced social mapping app.

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Waze is a free mobile navigation application for iphone or android that allows drivers to build and use live maps, real-time traffic updates and turn-by-turn navigation.

Google reportedly dropped a cool billion or so on the deal.

Official Google announcement: Google Maps and Waze, outsmarting traffic together

Speculation about the reasons:

Four Reasons For Google To Buy Waze - Forbes

Here?s Why Google Wants to Buy Waze, a Red-Hot Map App, for $1 Billion | TIME.com

Waze could drive better social tools at Google, experts say | PCWorld

Not sure this will have any direct impact on local. However if it makes more people use Google maps on their phone for directions, then likely there will be more local mobile searches as well. More than anything it just highlights Google's commitment to Google Maps.

 

[Linda Buquet]

This acquisition may tie into local and mobile marketing to some degree according to Ad Age.

Why Google Wanted Waze: The Local Ad Market Is Going Mobile | Digital - Advertising Age

Someone down the block, or driving past the mall, may be more valuable to a brick-and-mortar retailer than someone else miles away on their couch.

Waze has made a similar proximity-based pitch to advertisers with the advertising program it rolled out last fall. Brands like Best Buy and Whole Foods have run promotions within the app that pop up while users are setting their routes alerting drivers to a nearby store and dangling a coupon to get them there. Drivers can then click the ad to navigate to that store, letting Waze report back to the advertiser how much foot traffic their ads drove and how many coupons were redeemed.

"The mapping game is won on data," said BIA/Kelsey senior analyst Michael Boland. "If you can tell based on someone seeing an ad whether they navigated to [an advertiser's] front door and show those conversion metrics, that's the holy grail of advertising,"

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

Interesting! I always have enjoyed using Waze as a neat little app. I never imagined that Google would buy it though.

 

[Nick]

I like Waze and they integration with Google helps if you forget the address of the business.

I expect it will be integrated with Google local somehow

 

[Dave Cosper]

I've been tinkering with the Waze Map Editor and it appears they do not support business edits. According to their Guidelines, restaurants and businesses are not to be mapped and are handled by 3rd party providers such as Google Maps, Foursquare, Yelp and YP.