Can someone with deep knowledge about Waze or the market explain why it would be worth $1.3B? It seems to have okay but far from insane traction. The technology seems less than trivial but at google scale shouldn't be that hard to develop in house. Once developed, it can simply be built into Google Maps and get overnight traction. As such, using Waze to me seems like a hack anyway.
It's not (just) about acquiring new technology or users. It's about blocking competitors (Apple, Facebook, Microsoft) from getting as good as them, or better, at maps and navigation.
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Can someone with deep knowledge about Waze or the market explain why it would be worth $1.3B? It seems to have okay but far from insane traction. The technology seems less than trivial but at google scale shouldn't be that hard to develop in house. Once developed, it can simply be built into Google Maps and get overnight traction. As such, using Waze to me seems like a hack anyway.
It's not (just) about acquiring new technology or users. It's about blocking competitors (Apple, Facebook, Microsoft) from getting as good as them, or better, at maps and navigation.
I attended lecture by one of founders of Waze. If i'm not mistaken he said their pitch deck had only 1 slide, something like:
Nokia bought Navteq for $6B. Our users create map data for free.
Maybe Waze has certain patents that Google thinks are worth a lot?