Google Vs Facebook – A Bidding War to Buy Waze

There have been reports about Google and Facebook battling to buy Waze. Waze is a mobile mapping and navigation company. Waze was founded in 2007. It makes mobile application that provides real time traffic and routing information. Initially Facebook started negotiation to buy Waze. This triggered the idea of Google to jump in this war of bidding.

The main reason for the battle between the two mega-rich tech giants is the popularity of Waze app. It is being used by more than 47 million people in 193 countries, and the secret recipe is that map on Waze are powered by the people who use them. It is the fastest growing community-based navigation and traffic app.

Facebook and Google are gearing to bid Waze at $1 billion for obvious reasons. For Google, it is the sole competitor of Google map app. In fact, people prefer Waze over Google map app. This seems to have baffled the search engine giant. On buying Waze, Google wants to power its map app, and make it even more robust. Also, it does not want Facebook to get its hands on Waze.

On the other hand, Facebook wants to purchase Waze for three reasons. It believes that Waze would improve Facebook’s local search, which is an important application on mobile devices. To extend its reach among people, it believes maps are the core applications that it needs to own.  In addition, having Waze would give more mobile usage to Facebook, and in the future might make its news feed more robust.

Over the years, there have been many significant tensions among the two. But things were looking to ease, and Facebook was at all smiles with Google. But this bid once again heats up the tension as both strive hard to govern the consumer experience on the web.