Rumors circulated in recent weeks that Waze, the popular iOS-Android traffic-navigation app, was being courted by Google for a potential buyout. Today, Google confirmed that it has bought the Israel-based Waze, but specific terms of the deal were not revealed.
Google's official blog has the other details on their Waze acquisition, stating:
The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now. We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities. We’ll also work closely with the vibrant Waze community, who are the DNA of this app, to ensure they have what’s needed to grow and prosper.
Waze has traffic information on its maps that are provided by volunteer community members which has made its data base huge and also very popular. It even includes information on when and where local police are targeting speeders.
Waze recently announced it was beta testing a version of the app made for Windows Phone devices. There's no word on when the beta will be completed but now that Google has bought Waze this means Google is now technically working on a new Windows Phone app.
Source: Google | Image via Waze
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