Waze

From a community map to a company

Waze grew out of the FreeMap project, which Ehud Shabtai started in 2006 to create a map of Israel based on contributions from users. In 2008 Uri Levine and Amir Shinar joined him and the company was founded, according to the Israel Innovation Authority. Calcalist described how the idea began as a nonprofit project and became a business. Instead of buying a finished map and only giving driving directions, the company built a community that helps create and update it. In 2009 Noam Bardin joined as CEO and led the business during its expansion. The app was designed for use on a mobile phone, so that information from the drive can flow back to the service and help other drivers.

What makes the navigation community-based

The app combines GPS positioning, information about roads and user reports about traffic jams, accidents and road closures. The information is used to suggest a route and update the travel time. Alongside the drivers, a community of map editors takes part in maintaining the information about the road network. The Israel Innovation Authority described mapping with dedicated software and receiving updates in real time. Google described the community as a central part of the app in its acquisition announcement. This is a service whose usefulness is also tied to the information that comes from its users: a report about a road closure can change the information available to another user, and up-to-date traffic data can affect the route the system suggests during that same drive.

Milestone: international use

Calcalist reported that 2010 ended with about one million users in Israel and another four million abroad. According to the Israel Innovation Authority, the decision to expand outside Israel was made as early as 2009, and a later publication by the Authority described a service with more than a hundred million users in more than 180 countries and in about fifty languages. Expanding beyond Israel turned the mapping project into an international navigation product, in which millions of drivers use an Israeli consumer product and the community takes part in producing the information. Users contributed driving data and reports, and the information they provided was used by the service to suggest and update routes for other drivers.

The acquisition: announcement and reported price

On 11 June 2013, Google announced that it had already completed the acquisition of Waze. The announcement said the development team would stay in Israel and operate separately for now. The announcement did not publish a price. According to press reports, the price was about $1.1 billion (in Calcalist in 2020) or $1.15 billion (in Globes in 2024). Google's report for the second quarter of 2013 recorded total cash consideration of $966 million, along with an initial accounting valuation of the assets and liabilities.

Legacy

The Waze brand and the app continued after the acquisition. In the closing announcement, Google described a plan to bring Waze's traffic updates into Google Maps and its search capabilities into Waze. In a 2024 article, Globes documented the company's integration into the maps products division and the shutdown of its own advertising system. The organizational change did not end its existence as a navigation app. Uri Levine continued as an entrepreneur and investor, and in a Calcalist interview described how important keeping the brand was to him. The practical legacy lies in the service that kept running and in the community of drivers and map editors that was part of how the product was built from the start.