FTC Reviews Google's Purchase of Navigation App Waze

An anonymous reader writes "Google's acquisition of Waze has piqued the interest of the FTC and is now facing an antitrust review. "Google confirmed that it has been contacted by lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission over the company's '$1.1 billion acquisition of the mobile navigation company Waze, which closed in mid-June. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on details of the antitrust review by the FTC. Representatives of the agency didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.'"

Comments

Re:Analysis

[icebike]

There's a good analysis of it here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/23/links-23-june-the-unpredictability-of-the-law-ftc-to-probe-googles-waze-acquisition/

Actually, its a poor analysis. It totally misses the point that Wayz is NOT a mapping company. Its a traffic reporting one trick pony company.

That space (traffic reporting) is vastly smaller than the mapping segment. Google does this mostly by cell phones stacking up on roads.
Microsoft does this by tying into existing into Traffic.com, and also some State and Local traffic reporting systems, which is why their coverage are is so miserable.

Traffic.com is the major player in this sphere, and their service is really slow and difficult to expand.

Traffic.com is owned by Navteq which is owned by Nokia. I'm sure neither of those companies would object to Google getting a toe-hold in the traffic market. *Cough*.