How Google bought Waze

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of my closest friends was the founder &#x2F; CEO of Trapster - Pete Tenereillo - who was crushing Waze for years in total MAU.<p>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?).<p>Trapster was eventually scooped up and killed by Nokia (1), is there any true competitor to Waze @ this point?<p>(1) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;trapster-shutting-down&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;trapster-shutting-down&#x2F;</a>

I would like to give a counterpoint to the opinion that Google Maps&#x27; quality has dwindled, from a developing nation perspective from having used it in India, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa.<p>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.

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&#x27;s a solid app.