Yeah, that’s a Billion Dollars.
A month ago we reported that Facebook was eyeing to buy traffic and mapping service Waze for $1 billion. Well, a refusal to relocate from Israel to the U.S. left those negotiations in the dust. Reuters is now reporting from a source close to the matter that Google is in final talks with an acquisition for an upped price of $1.3 billion. The source says that talks are very close to being done and “logistics” and not sticking points are still being worked out.
This acquisition makes sense for Google. Waze has a user base of 47 million members and it uses satellite data from users to generate maps and real-time traffic info. Google already has Google Maps, so there’s a possibility of anti-trust concerns, but a Waze acquisition could be a powerful thing. Google could keep Waze as-is and improve it or it could kill Waze off and combine its features and data with Maps and steer former Waze customers to Maps. Waze is an established brand, but then again Google is Google, so I could see this going either way if a deal is made.
Source: Reuters
