Just yesterday we heard a rumor of Google possibly acquiring the crowd-sourced navigation service Waze, and today that rumor has become a reality. Google today acquired Waze for a cool $1 Billion. Google’s acquisition will merge Waze’s data with that of Google Maps, bringing updated traffic and road information to the already powerful service.
“The Waze community and its dedicated team have created a great source of timely road corrections and updates. We welcome them to Google and look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world.”
According to the Google Blog, the Waze development team will remain in Israel and operate separately from Google for the time being. Google will work with Waze to “ensure they have what’s needed to grow and prosper.”
While details about what’s to come from the merger are still murky, we will surely see some great improvements to both Google Maps and Waze in the coming months.
[Via: Google]