‘A billion here, a billion there. Soon you’re talking serious money…” . Looking back on the ‘social’ and ‘cloud’ deals we have reported of late, they all seem to be ‘about a $1billion’ even though none are profit-making and few even have any revenues of note. And '$1.1b' is the rumoured value of Google’s acquisition of Israeli Waze announced last night.
Last year’s abortive launch of Apple Maps put mobile-based maps and navigation into the forefront. I haven’t used Waze myself – yet – but now intend to try it out. Waze is basically a crowd-sourcing app that provides traffic and other travel info. How many times have I hit a jam on the M6 and wanted to know what is causing it. It seems to take an age for the info to come through on the radio traffic reports or on the AA or other traffic info sites. Waze allows other users to update with their own live experiences. Although there is no word on how you do that whilst driving your car at the same time! Waze is a lot more than accidents though. If you leave your Waze App on, it will track your speed and location etc and thereby build up a pretty good picture of traffic conditions. It also allows speed camera alerts, detours to recommended local facilities etc.
As is the norm, I don’t think that Waze has any revenues of note. They see advertising for local amenities as one revenue source. So I guess the Google acquisition will help greatly there.
Putting the valuation to one side (What’s billion to Google particularly when it can be paid out of foreign cash holdings?), looks like a really good acquisition for Google and just demonstrates the importance of mobile-oriented services.