
Google Maps and Waze - Lightning
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/google-maps-and-waze-outsmarting.html
======
lpolovets
What do others think about the safety of using Waze? One thing that I have
noticed is that the app encourages me to interact with it _as I 'm driving_ in
order to add data to the system. It's a little hypocritical of me to complain
about this because sometimes I text or check email while driving, which I know
I should not do, but it still feels weird that Waze actually encourages me to
read the screen and interact with UI while I drive. I wonder if there are any
liability issues around this or if the core UI will change as a result of the
acquisition.

Also, I wonder if Waze will become irrelevant if Google happens to productize
self-driving cars (which can presumably talk to each other).

~~~
amalcon
_sometimes I text or check email while driving, which I know I should not do_

I don't mean to pick on you here. You are clearly aware, but it still needs to
be said:

Please do not email, text, or even talk on a cell phone while driving. Driving
is the most dangerous task that is socially acceptable for nonprofessionals to
perform. It is very irresponsible to make such a task any more difficult than
it needs to be.

~~~
fjabre
Preach all you want. Pass all the laws you want. People will do this because
they can and they want to. The only real way to mitigate it is through
innovation. Not by telling adults on the internet what they can and cannot do
or by passing draconian laws telling people when they are allowed to
communicate.

~~~
teraflop
Some people "can and want to" steal cars, or commit domestic violence, or dump
benzene into rivers. "I want to do this, therefore it should be legal" is not
a good argument when there's a compelling argument that it harms society.

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masonhensley
Doesn't Google already incorporate user's data for traffic information[1]? I
try to have my maps/ navigation running during my commute home to feed that
data.

The Google Now traffic feature saves me at least an hour a week on the return
leg of my commute (14 miles.) I'm glad they are trying to make it more
accurate.

[1](2009) [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-
sittin...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-
traffic.html)

~~~
clone1018
This will allow more specific user information, like which lane is blocked up
or " eople can report accidents, traffic jams, speed traps, police and can
update roads, landmarks, house numbers, etc."

From the Waze wikipedia page.

~~~
masonhensley
Thanks for the clarification.

But now that I think about it, when I'm walking out of the office, I want to
know whether I should take "Route A", "Route B" or "Route C" to get home.

What causes the traffic whether it is construction, an accident or plain old
traffic doesn't matter to me. I wish Google Now (GN) would tell me that
instead of me having to double check by clicking the alternate routes button
in navigation. Sometimes GN does not suggest the quickest route for me even
though a $1.33 toll road may save me 20 minutes.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What causes the traffic whether it is construction, an accident or plain old
> traffic doesn't matter to me.

No, but knowing about what is causing the traffic can (if the analytics get
advanced enough) make it easier for the central service to determine what the
likely impact in the _future_ (e.g., by the time you get to it) is likely to
be, which is important.

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lawdawg
Great news for both Google Maps and Waze. From my understanding, Waze
negotiated a 3 year period where they would be allowed to continue
independently, but I imagine there will be quite a bit of data sharing between
the two (Waze can now use Google's maps and POI data, and Google can use
Waze's data to improve its realtime directions)

~~~
joosters
I'll bet you that Waze won't exist as a separate app/product in 3 years. I
hope it does, but I doubt that Google are going to maintain two separate
navigation apps.

~~~
lawdawg
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/06/09/google-
to-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/06/09/google-to-spite-
facebook-buy-waze-for-1-3-billion/)

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mike-cardwell
FWIW, I used Waze for a few weeks but went back to using Google Navigation.

I found that the traffic data on Google Navigation was much more accurate and
up to date than that provided by Waze, and that Google Nav's display is much
easier on the eyes. Waze showed more information, but most of it was
irrelevant noise or just plain wrong. All of the social stuff was also very
distracting.

This was when I was commuting daily on one of the UKs busiest motorways.

Also, they send your login details in the clear. I remember taking a traffic
dump of my Android phone to see how easy it would be to scrape information at
the time... Not that difficult.

~~~
mikeleeorg
I did the same, but for slightly different reasons. In the Silicon Valley
area, the data from Waze seems more up-to-date. But I found the UI very
difficult and frustrating, so much so that I switched back to Google Maps.

I'm looking forward to the Google Maps UI with the Waze data.

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yalogin
This looks more like an acquisition to keep Waze out of the competitors' hands
than Google needing it. Sure, having the platform will enhance Google maps and
also probably be enhanced to get other POI data as well over time (if they are
not already getting them) but Google already spent a lot of money getting that
data.

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dylangs1030
I'm excited about this. I actually wouldn't mind if Waze was shut down instead
of the 3-year period, as long as Google assimilated all of its technology.

It would be fantastic to have Google both data mining traffic data (as it does
now) and also combining this with user-volunteered traffic reports. Each
technology has something to offer the other, and it will be really cool to
bring in the best of both worlds. I'm very confident about this acquisition,
it feels like it wasn't just an acqui-hire.

~~~
wizzard
I really don't see Google incorporating all the Waze functionality. Waze is
pretty bandwidth-intensive. And I could see some liability issues with
presenting crowdsourced data directly on Gmaps.

I feel like this was simply a "keep Waze out of the hands of our competitors"
move, and now it will die a slow death like most other Google acquisitions.

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alexholehouse
Great for Waze, good for Google, but I feel like a lot of the value (from
Google's perspective) is stopping Apple (or FB) getting Waze.

~~~
rsl7
Maybe FB, but not Apple. It's just not the right fit for Apple.

~~~
jonknee
Yea, Apple would have paid for a lot of users that they would immediately
screw over (anyone not using iOS, Apple could not cope having a popular
Android app). I imagine the Waze team wouldn't have been cool with that either
since they weren't even willing to relocate.

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belorn
I hope that someone will make a OpenStreetMap version of Waze. As a project
already based on user generated information, it seems more sensible than
sending everything to Google.

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URSpider94
I think people have missed a key value of Waze -- their crowd-sourced mappping
infrastructure. They have essentially created from scratch a navigation
database that competes with the big two players in the field -- TeleAtlas and
Navteq -- with update cycles of a week or less for new user-submitted data.
This system would be amazingly powerful in developing countries where the map
set is incomplete or full of errors.

That alone makes them worth a good fraction of $1b.

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1gn1t10n
I wonder if providing this kind of information to the public can lead to worse
performance (commute time).

This reminds me of Braess's Paradox [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox)

~~~
joosters
I recommend the excellent book 'Traffic' \- [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traffic-
drive-what-says-about/dp/014...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traffic-drive-what-
says-about/dp/0141027398) \- it covers this pretty well.

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draugadrotten
Great, now tha NSA have a direct pipe to waze too.

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yen223
If you want to go full paranoia, don't forget that the GPS is a US DoD
project! Why bother with GPS clients, when you can have direct access to the
satellites?

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uwnav
I'm confused, very confused. There's talk about this acquisition being in the
$1 Billion range. Can anyone break down how this company can be worth that
much money?

Revenue - no idea if or how much money they made? IP - Patents on using
location to perform traffic analytics? Talent - 100+ employees? Userbase - ~50
million users? Technology - Isn't the app easily replicable?

It's really confusing for entrepreneurs to know if they are building something
of value when we can't discern how these companies are being valued!

~~~
dakimov
Of course, that company is clearly not worth that amount of money even
closely. It was a startup running exlusively on investors' money with no model
of generating revenue whatsoever. Without the acquisition their perspective
would be to run out of money and fade away. Yes, they have an impressive
userbase, but even that userbase is hardly worth $1B.

The price paid obviously has nothing to do with the real value of the company.
I guess Google managers have their motives. On the Google's scale usual
business rationales do not work.

Obviously, the giants pay billions mainly because they can.

Speaking of the motivation, this deal looks pretty much like shutting down a
competitor, though I do not know what Google will actually do.

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gummify
It would have been interesting to see Waze remain independent and as an
alternative map solution. With 34 million users, it could have been a very
profitable business for the long-run.

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jmedwards
Apple'z biz dev team was on holiday, I suppose?

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joelrunyon
Has anybody familiar with Waze's monetization system?

I used it with a client and saw absolutely terrible metrics. We burned through
a ton of cash and got almost zero results. To be fair: I've only had one
client try it & I'd argue that they weren't the best fit, but I'd be very
interested in seeing what other people's results were here.

~~~
smackfu
I've seen icons for chain restaurants show up on the map. Is that what you
mean?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I get ads from Taco Bell on my Waze.

~~~
ja27
That's all the ads I get. I can't wait until there are ads from everyone. Then
I'll stop using it.

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kailuowang
At least from this announcement, it's not merely a defensive acquisition.
Google is looking forward to integrate the user-based realtime traffic system
from Waze into Google Map. I am a little surprised that whatever Waze provides
now wasn't a complete overlap with what Google Map is also offering in its
trafic related functionalities.

~~~
dabeeeenster
I was under the impression that Google Maps already used crowdsourced data for
its traffic?

I use it in the UK and it's incredibly accurate - scarily so!

~~~
aroch
For its traffic updates (Green/Yellow/Red) is does use some user collected
data

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tibbon
I personally can't wait until I can get (and send) Waze alerts using Google
Glass for when I'm motorcycling.

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crusso
I kind of like Waze at very least for the police speed trap notifications.

I can't see Google continuing to support that feature.

~~~
CamperBob2
Agreed. Is their data format open, in the sense that anyone could write a
client that did nothing but transmit and receive police locations?

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diminoten
Who, other than Google, is a respectable entrant in this space? Did they just
consume their only competition?

~~~
fudged71
Apple is very much interested in getting more valuable routing/traffic
information! Microsoft and Samsung, too!

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michaelw
Waze uses Bing maps on the backend.

Wanna bet that "look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to
make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world." means converting
to use Google maps?

~~~
jordanthoms
Well, duh. Can't see anybody being upset about that though, except perhaps
Microsoft

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neology
NSA will also know when, where and how you are driving. Fantastic.

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nobleach
Does this mean no more speedtrap data? I can see google not wanting to deal
with that tangled web of legality.

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mickt
Will this be another application that Google lets wither?

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vuldin
Looks like I'll need to delete another account.

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nikunjk
How much is the question.

~~~
taylorwc
Speculation is $1B-1.3B

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guard-of-terra
"imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow
travelers ahead of you, calling out “fender bender...totally stuck in left
lane!”"

Yandex Maps do that, like, forever by letting users to mark accidents, road
works and other events on the road as they drive - for fellow drivers to see.
Works pretty fine and sometimes even a bit socially.

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Hyrum_Graff
Another service I get to quit. Soon they'll be nothing left.

~~~
jgeorge
Same here. I trust Waze with my location information, to provide a service to
me. I do not trust Google with that same information, because it will be used
for far more than providing that navigation service to me. No thanks.

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dakimov
Free app, no monetization model ----> Sold for $1B

Take notes folks.

