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Google To Buy Waze For $1.3 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "Google and Israeli start-up Waze have agreed in principle on a deal in which the search engine giant will buy the road traffic information sharing application for $1.3 billion. Waze, which claims more than 40 million users, describes itself as an app bringing together 'the world's largest community of drivers who work together to fight traffic, and save time and gas money on their daily commute.' There have been previous reports that first Apple and then Facebook wanted to acquire the Israeli start-up."
Waze crowdsources routefinding, which is a huge computational problem. I imagine that like Dodgeball the technology, but not the actual user experience, will ultimately be merged into the larger Google Maps crowdsourcing operation.
This is a huge blow for Apple, who simply don't have Google's mapping resources and really need a way to bootstrap their maps improvement efforts. They don't have a web based map system to draw on, and as bad as Apple Maps is, the most pernickety users - the ones most likely to file correction reports - have moved back to the Google Maps app. Well, I know I have.
(That stupid "legal" link in the corner of even the tiniest API-provided, in-app map is exactly the sort of nonsense Apple is supposed to not do!)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm not too happy about this. Waze was the only alternative that could go toe-to-toe with Google Maps Navigation in terms of doing real-time crowdsourcing aggregation of driving data.
I know there are others like Nokia (which purchased Navteq, currently the leader in maps), Microsoft, and Tom Tom, but those others don't work nearly as well mostly because they haven't done anything new in the last ten years.
At least, there is Open Street Maps now, but that still doesn't have good turn-by-turn navigation (nor good real-time up-to-the-second information).
For those who think "What on earth is geotarding?", http://www.shootingatbubbles.com/archives/geotarding-is-as-useful-as-llama-spit/ has an explanation:
When combined it means locking out potential users of your web service because their geographical location conflicts with licensing and copyright agreements.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
> This is a huge blow for Apple
I doubt it. I've said (when Scott Forstall stepped down) that Apple realised that it's not in the data industry. Sure, they can do a bit in-house, but they just don't have the resources to cross the moat that Google has with its infrastructure, code, and expertise.
Apple does hardware, interfaces, and marketing very well. It leverages other company's products (its kernal, the BSD userland, GCC / LLVM, and Google's online stuff) when it lacks any real competitive advantage. Google is a harder pill to swallow (since they can't just fork it and modify things to suit their needs), but it's a battle they've chosen not to have.
Android and Glasses are what they should be focus on beating, and they won't beat them if they lumber their own devices with half-assed clones of the things Google does best.
I gave it until the Google Maps standalone app launched, plus about a fortnight. It simply wasn't improving quickly enough in my region (which is not the US) despite my filing error reports daily. I check in on it now and then, and it took them four months to notice that the shopping centre in which one of their own stores was located was not, in fact, a large park. (In fact, most places with "park" in the name were marked out as parks, regardless of whether it made any sense...) Several other issues remain unresolved to this day.
A lot of my issues aren't with mapping data but design. It's presented like a car SATNAV with lots of POI icons for food etc. prioritised over things like road names, railway stations, major universities, etc. so while it's probably good when you're driving it's very hard to read as a pedestrian. Even the colour contrast is terrible, it's all cold-toned pastel shades for everything. That's one I can't see improving any time soon.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well, they've got to get their maps data from somewhere, which means they're in the data industry now. The fact that Apple were bidding for Waze suggests they're stuck with it unless they decide to partner up with someone like Google again.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Instead of wasting so much money, I wish Google had investing in something much more worthwhile like offline navigation.
Well, they've got to get their maps data from somewhere, which means they're in the data industry now. The fact that Apple were bidding for Waze suggests they're stuck with it unless they decide to partner up with someone like Google again.
Apple got their data from a number of different sources originally. One of these was TomTom which might explain the decent data quality in the UK. They were also reported to have been getting traffic data from Waze in some form already. Don't forget that Waze aren't a mapping company, they are a traffic company.
Apple aren't going to partner with Google because Google would have them over a barrel with respect to mapping on iOS. All they can do is iterate on the data that they've got, they were employing people to manage this in the different regions a while back, and look for other complimentary data sources. One problem with getting a new data source is merging it into the existing data and managing conflicts. I worked on GIS systems back in the early '90s and it wasn't trivial then with the small amount of data available. I can only imagine that its got worse as the data set sizes have increased.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I already did, pop3, I found that my ISP provides an excellent email. I was quite surprised how much easier Thunderbird is, and pop3 may be old, but it doesn't leave your email on the cloud.
Secure the link with TLS, I asked the ISP if their SMTP connections are force secure, he assure me it is.
My government may not protect my privacy, my British politicians may not have my interests at heart, I may be classed as possible terrorist to be watched, but there is a way forward here.
And it even works better than before!
Your email still passes through the ISPs server so the meta-data about who you received mail from and when, and who you sent mail to and when, is still recorded in their logs. If GCHQ see something they count as suspicious then they can apply to the Home Secretary or Justice Secretary to allow interception of your email and its done.
If the PRISM stuff is to believed then it doesn't matter where your email is delivered it just has to pass a listening point and they have it. So well done for changing your mail setup but I don't think it'll make much difference.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Google best?
Try telling that to the HGV drivers from a well known trucking company (No Eddie S) who get lost where I live due to Google telling them that
1) my road is a through road (I was 30+ years ago)
2) it is suitable for 32+Tonne vehicles (It is not).
Despite several people telling Google that their maps are wrong they never get changed.
The HGV's get to the end of my road and find it is a dead end despite the signs saying that it is a no through road.
Then they get stuck because reversing 1.5 miles back up a narrow lane is impossible.
My neighbor comes to their rescue and only charges them £300 to tow them back up the lane with his mega tractor.
As for streetview, Google never got down my end of the lane so we are some of the great un-googled of this world. Hurrah!