
How Google bought Waze - geoffreyy
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-bought-waze-the-inside-story-2015-8
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acdha
Waze disappoints me because it's a great idea in what appears to be the
classic Google death cycle. They haven't added anything in years except for
ads, the long-standing UI blemishes are never fixed, and recently the servers
have started returning errors regularly, which probably means they're about to
discontinue it.

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tomphoolery
It makes a lot more sense to roll Waze's features and data into Google Maps,
unfortunately...

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mynameisvlad
They need to integrate more. Google Maps is too conservative with its routing,
it tends to stick to highways if at all possible. Waze is far more aggressive,
it uses surface roads and side streets to get you out of traffic and to your
destination faster, usually 10-15 minutes faster than Google Maps does on my
commute home.

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DannyBee
" Google Maps is too conservative with its routing, it tends to stick to
highways if at all possible."

and waze is far in the other direction, often telling people to get on and off
highways repeatedly to save 30 seconds.

In fact, waze _estimates_ it will save time, but in practice, it rarely does
for me.

The routing of either is just a cost model for the same path finding engine.
Maps seems to try to avoid various types of road transitions, assuming that
it's traffic data isn't perfect and these things have some cost (IE traffic
lights, etc, which are not accounted for except as average traffic speed) Waze
seems to simply assume the apparently shortest fastest path will actually turn
out that way.

Waze is often wrong, Maps rarely is. When Waze is wrong, it often takes only
as long as Maps does or longer, (i've had Waze tell me to take routes it
claimed were 5 minutes faster, that were 10 minutes longer). Maps is usually
accurate, but it may leave something on the table.

I'd still rather have the second. Trying to pretend you have good data when
you don't doesn't lead to good results. (IE garbage in, garbage out).

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aembleton
It's a bit of a shame that they're not independent of Google, but I would have
sold out too for that sort of money. I use Waze everyday to avoid traffic and
even when I do end up in a jam it lets me know how long I've got to sit
through it.

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jonknee
Well thanks to antitrust concerns they are pretty much independent and it
still has the same awful UI and bugs of the app before it was sold. Really
wish it could benefit from Google Maps (especially for POI search!).

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sirkneeland
I think you can do Google POI search from within Waze, no? IIRC you can select
from sources like Yelp, Google, Waze's own db etc...

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jonknee
It does give you some options, but then it starts to feel like you're doing
the work instead of Waze (why can't they diff the results and just show you
the POIs?). The predictive search is just awful, you'll see results from all
over the country (and sometimes world!) when you're looking for something a
few miles away. There are frequently duplicates in the list and adding to the
issue is that the list view also contains so little information that it's hard
to see if the result is the one you're looking for. Google Maps absolutely
blows away Waze in terms of search UI.

Other gripes:

It suggests using HOV lanes despite not knowing if there is someone else in
the car, that can dramatically effect routes (say route A is faster only if
you can use the HOV lane).

For ferries (I live in Seattle) it doesn't count the time on the ferry which
can give you wildly incorrect time estimates. There's also not a way to ask
for a route that doesn't include a ferry (sometimes you can drive around). For
example Google Maps suggests 1:04 to get to a spot on Bainbrdige for me right
now where Waze says 25 minutes. Considering the ferry ride itself takes ~30
minutes...

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sirkneeland
I agree they need to revamp their HOV situation. In my case, I have a car with
an HOV sticker and I don't know if it's measuring HOV lane traffic separately
from non-HOV traffic (huge difference in the Bay Area on the 101)

@jonknee is your name jon kneeland? I'm a John Kneeland. Small world!

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harel
I found waze pretty bad at directing you to your target and pretty amazing at
locating jams. I stopped using it for directions when I visit Israel although
many people there use it religiously. Google maps on the other hand was great
at taking me there, but less so knowing about the road conditions. After the
buyout I noticed Google maps gets a lot better at knowing if the road is
blocked by traffic and how long a stretch of jammed Road takes to clear. I
think that marriage worked well, at least for my driving experience.

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ciconia
Yes, Waze is a religion in Israel, perhaps because traffic conditions there
are so unexpected. While on vacation there recently I downloaded the app, but
found it unusable. The amount of noise in the UI - alerts, ads, IMs from other
drivers - is unbearable.

I find that Google Maps is simple, clean, and quite accurate in predicting
time to destination. Plus, now it displays traffic jams and incidents signaled
by Waze users.

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harel
Ads are also a religion in Israel. But the last place I want to see them is
when I'm driving. Turn right here to save 5 shekels on some lotion. No thanks,
and now I've missed my turn...

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reacweb
For driving near Paris, Waze is incredibly effective. I think it is caused by
the mass effect: Paris is a permanent traffic jam and many people are using
waze. In less crowded area, data access is not reliable. As a result waze
behaves badly, worse than a ordinary GPS with traffic information.

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rokhayakebe
The part about dilution was interesting. I looked at several tech startup IPO
filings and it "appeared" to me that most founders ended up with 4 to 7% in
equity. Also in nearly all cases, there is one VC who owns more than 20% of
the company.

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durga
Pretty standard in my opinion. Depending on your negotiability, you're going
to get diluted 10-40% in every round. Do that a few times, and you can see
where one ends up :)

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sahaj
Better to have a little piece of a really big pie, than to have a really small
pie all by yourself.

~~~
kzhahou
Kinda pathetic though, isn't it? A group of people devote their lives to a
product, working round-the-clock for years, and then reap ( _relatively_ )
tiny rewards compared to the money man.

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harryh
What money man are you referring to exactly? Most of the actual money in these
situations comes from massive institutional funds where there is no individual
man.

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kzhahou
The fund, the firm, and the individuals who led investments. No?

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harryh
Those individuals make far less than founders in a successful outcome.

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aresant
One of my closest friends was the founder / CEO of Trapster - Pete Tenereillo
- who was crushing Waze for years in total MAU.

Trapster was originally positioned @ speed trap avoidance but as they grew to
tens-of-millions of users their feature set more closely mirrored Waze (or
vice versa?).

Trapster was eventually scooped up and killed by Nokia (1), is there any true
competitor to Waze @ this point?

(1) [http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/01/trapster-shutting-
down/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/01/trapster-shutting-down/)

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somberi
I would like to give a counterpoint to the opinion that Google Maps' quality
has dwindled, from a developing nation perspective from having used it in
India, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa.

Google maps in these countries has easily slipped inside the daily behavior of
people in these countries in a way that is heartening to see - Drivers use it,
students use it, hotels use it to show the way about town, bus drivers use it.
It is amazing how accurate it is in these countries. I am thankful it exists.

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Colliers
Can you start turn by turn navigation in those countries? In Vietnam, although
the maps are more than good enough, you can only preview a route, you can't
actually start the route tracking. This is very frustrating if you're on a
motorbike where the voice instructions and vibrations would be very useful.

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abenga
In Kenya, you can use turn-by-turn navigation on Google Maps, and it works
very well, especially within Nairobi. Other towns may not be covered as well
(I think), but it works excellently (voice instructions, etc) in guiding you
on highways between towns.

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partiallypro
I use Waze every day, but I fear that Google will eventually kill off their
Windows mobile app because they despise Microsoft. Right now they have just
stopped updating it. A shame, really, because it's a solid app.

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sirkneeland
It will eventually break once they evolve the server-side APIs enough. Foe
example, I doubt the Symbian client still works...

The really annoying things is that even after Microsoft makes it painfully
easy for Android apps to be brought into Windows 10, Google probably _still_
won't do it.

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FullyFunctional
Maybe Microsoft should make it painlessly easy instead?

I depend on Waze every day and its issues are nothing compared to value it
provides. Unfortunately it's not integrated into my Model S so sometimes I
drive with both the "native" Model S GPS (= Google Maps) and Waze so I can
benefit from the greater maps on the 17" screen as well as the better
directions from Waze. It's mighty confusing though.

