Google on Tuesday confirmed the purchase of traffic app Waze, beating competitors such as Facebook and Apple to the popular online community, in which drivers share information on traffic and road conditions.
Terms of the deal were not revealed but reports in the Israeli press and the financial news service Bloomberg put the price at between 1.1 billion and 1.3 billion dollars.
“To help you outsmart traffic, today we’re excited to announce we’ve closed the acquisition of Waze,” said Brian McClendon, the Google executive in charge of maps. “This fast-growing community of traffic-obsessed drivers is working together to find the best routes from home to work, every day.”
Google said that the Waze team would remain based in Israel, but it was unclear whether the app, which uses input from some 50 million users to provide data about road conditions and routes, would remain as a standalone product or be integrated into Google’s own mapping software.
