A number of companies including Apple and Facebook have reportedly been considering acquisitions of crowd-sourced mapping and navigation service Waze, but Google may have outspent them all. According to a report on Sunday from Israeli newspaper Globes, Google will announce this week that it has acquired Waze for a whopping $1.3 billion. The Israel-based startup was reportedly very close to a deal with Facebook, however a dispute over whether or not to close Waze’s research and development facilities in Ra’anana, Israel stalled the deal. It is unclear whether or not Google plans to maintain Waze’s Israeli facilities, however a subsequent report from AllThingsD states that Google intends to keep Waze’s service separate from its own mapping solutions for the time being.
Battle over Waze to reportedly end with $1.3 billion Google deal
Published Jun 10th, 2013 7:50AM EDT
If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.
Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 15 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
