Google announced on their official blog on Tuesday that it had officially acquired Waze Ltd., the Israeli-startup company based in Ra’naana. Terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, but Google reportedly spent over $1 billion in cash to acquire the crowd-sourced navigation application.
Waze, the popular mapping service used by nearly 50 million people, collects input from its users in real time to notify the entire Waze community of traffic incidents, road work, speed traps, and other various road hazards in order to find the best route to and from a destination and outsmart traffic.
Founded by Uri Levine in 2008, Waze has received praise from the app community, recently winning the Best Overall Mobile App at the 2013 Global Mobile Awards.
Waze,
on their blog, stressed the shared vision of both companies to create a global mapping service to help drivers outsmart traffic, save money and time, and make everyone’s commute more enjoyable.
Ambassador Michael Oren: "Congratulations to Israel's Waze, which was acquired by Google today for more than $1 billion. In addition to the deep spiritual ties, shared democratic values and strong security cooperation, the U.S.-Israel relationship has a growing fourth pillar: that’s the commercial relationship."