| Waze Mobile Ltd | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | |
| Initial release | 2006; 19 years ago (2006) (as FreeMap Israel) |
| Available in | 50 languages[1] |
| Type | Satellite navigation software |
| License | |
| Website | waze |
Waze Mobile Ltd,[2] (/weɪz/;Hebrew:ווייז מובייל בע"מ)doing business asWaze, is a subsidiary company ofGoogle that providessatellite navigation software on smartphones and other computers that support theGlobal Positioning System (GPS). In addition toturn-by-turn navigation, it incorporates user-submitted travel times and route details while downloading location-dependent information over acellular network. Waze describes its application as a community-driven initiative that is free to download and use.
The software was originally developed inIsrael by Waze Mobile, a company founded by Israeli entrepreneurs Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar, andUri Levine, who are also veterans ofUnit 8200.[3][4] Funding for the initial project was provided by two Israeli venture capital firms, Magma and Vertex Ventures Israel, as well as by an early-stage American venture capital firm, Bluerun Ventures. In June 2013, Waze Mobile was acquired by Google for US$1.3 billion.[5][6][7]
The application generates revenue throughhyperlocal advertising to an estimated 130 million users.[8]
In 2006, Israeli programmer Ehud Shabtai founded a community project known asFreeMap Israel, which aimed to create (with the crowd-sourcing assistance of community users) a free digital mapping database ofIsrael compiled in theHebrew language with ensured free content, updates, and distribution.[9] In 2008, Shabtai formed a company calledWaze to commercialize the initial project;[10] in 2009, it was renamed toWaze Mobile Ltd. and gave birth to its tagline"Outsmarting Traffic, Together."[11] coined by the company's first in-house communications hire, Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski.[12]
In 2010, the company raised US$25 million in the second round of funding;[13] an additional $30 million was raised in financing in the following year.[14] The application was updated in 2011 to display real-time, community-curated points of interest, including local events such as street fairs and protests.[15]
By December 2011, Waze had employed 80 people, 70 of whom were based inRaʽanana, Israel, with the remaining 10 based inPalo Alto, United States.[16][17] In November 2012, the company began to monetize its application, offering resellers and advertisers a web interface to advertise based on location, where a small icon appears when a phone is at a particular location, prompting the user to engage.[18] It also offers television news stations a web interface to broadcast current traffic reports and alerts directly from the Waze application; the service had been in use by 25 American television news stations by June 2013.[19] It has also been used inRio de Janeiro, Brazil, inside Rio's Operations Center since July 24, 2013,[20] as well as in the American states ofNew York andNew Jersey since 2012.
In 2013, theGSM Association, a trade association of mobile network operators, gave Waze the Best Overall Mobile App award at the association'sMobile World Congress exhibition.[21]
In June 2013, Waze was acquired byGoogle for $1.3 billion.[5][6][7] Waze's then-100 employees received about $1.2 million on average: the largest payout to employees in Israeli high tech.[22] As part of the acquisition, the Waze development team continued to operate in Israel as a separate entity from Google.[23]
In June 2013, theFederal Trade Commission (FTC) of theUnited States began a consideration of whether Google's acquisition of Waze was potentially violatingcompetition law;[24] Waze was among a very small group of competitors in the mobile mapping sector againstGoogle Maps. The FTC later decided that it would not challenge the deal;[25] theOffice of Fair Trading of theUnited Kingdom and the Israel Antitrust Authority also launched an investigation, in which the acquisition was ultimately unchallenged.[26][27][28] However, in 2020, the FTC announced that it would be re-examining Google's 2013 acquisition of Waze.[29]
Waze collects map data, travel times, and traffic information from users and transmits it to the Waze server, at no cost to Waze.[30] Waze users ("Wazers") can report accidents, traffic jams, speed and police traps, and, from the online map editor, can update roads, landmarks, house numbers, etc. Waze sends anonymous information, including users' speed and location, back to its database to improve the service as a whole.
Based on the information collected, Waze is then in a position to provide routing and real-time traffic updates. Waze can also identify the cheapest fuel station near a user or along their route, provided Waze has enabled fuel prices for that country. The fuel prices are reported and updated by users and/or other third parties in proximity to a station. This feature currently only supports gasoline and diesel pricing.
Waze offers turn-by-turn voice navigation, real-time traffic, and other location-specific alerts. Waze encourages users to report traffic or road hazards through incentives such as acquiring points for their profiles.[31]
Waze has the ability to direct users based oncrowdsourced information. Waze users are able to report a multitude of traffic-related incidents from accidents to police traps. This data is used by Waze to help other users either by alerting them of the condition ahead or rerouting the user to avoid the area entirely. In addition to user input, Waze relies on information from state agencies for traffic events such as road construction. The idea behind this is that the more people that provide data the more accurate it will be.[32]
In addition to using crowdsourced information for traffic alerts, Waze also allows registered users tomodify the map data itself through the Waze Map Editor. Map editors are allowed to make changes to the map based on where they have driven while using Waze as well as their rank which is based on how many map edits a user has made.In June 2013, Waze introduced a global localization project that enables future road closures and real-time traffic updates during major events in a given country, for example theTour de France.[33] Google also acquired Waze in the same month. At the time of Google's acquisition, there were nearly 50 million Waze users.[34] In 2017, an option was added for motorcycle users, as well as specialized routes for people eligible to drive in carpool lanes.[35]
Waze also lets users choose their navigation voice. Some featured voices includeMorgan Freeman,T-Pain,DJ Khaled,Arnold Schwarzenegger,Cookie Monster,Colonel Sanders,Kevin Hart,Shaq, and many more.[36]
In March 2017,Spotify announced its partnership with Waze to give an integrated experience where Wazers could play music on Spotify directly from Waze app and get Waze directions on Spotify app on the Android platform. Six months later, the feature was made available on the iOS platform.[37][38] In May 2017, Waze introduced the ability for users to record their own voice navigation prompts.[39]
In August 2018, Waze introducedAndroid Auto support.[40] In September 2018, Waze introducedApple CarPlay support after Apple releasediOS 12.[41]
In October 2018, Waze announced its partnership withPandora,Deezer,iHeart Radio,NPR One,Scribd,Stitcher, andTuneIn for Waze Audio Player whichSpotify has been Waze inaugural partner. However, Android users won't be able to link Deezer, and iOS users won't have access to Pandora, NPR, or TuneIn when Waze announced its partnership in Medium suggesting joining its beta program to be able to use mentioned services.[42]
In February 2019, Waze updated its iOS platform withSiri Shortcuts support.[43] In May 2019 the company announced it would be addingPandora as a new streaming service to the audio play feature for iOS users, allowing riders to have more music options during their commute.[44] In August 2019, Waze addedYouTube Music integration to both platforms.[45]
Google announced at theGoogle I/O 2019 developer conference it was addingGoogle Assistant integration with Waze.[46] The integration was made available to Android phones in June 2019.[47]
In September 2020, Waze added support for lane guidance. Waze also announced that starting in October 2020, it would implement trip suggestions, pulling together suggestions from recently visited places.[48]
Waze ran a dedicated carpooling app, Waze Carpool, which was first launched in 2016 and was available in the US, Brazil, and Israel. In 2022, Google announced that the carpool app would be retired, citing COVID-related changes in commuting patterns that led to a sharp decline in carpooling.[49]
In November 2023, Waze introduced a new safety feature with car crash history alerts.[50]
Waze launched the Connected Citizens Program (CCP) in June 2014, a free, two-way data sharing program used by over 450 governments, departments of transportation, and municipalities for traffic analysis, road planning, and emergency workforce dispatching.[51][52] The program is a two-way data exchange between Waze and the partner.
In 2014,Rio de Janeiro started collecting data for its traffic management system. Rio collects real-time data both from drivers who use the Waze navigation app and pedestrians who use the public-transportation appMoovit. Rio was also talking to the owners of cycling appStrava to monitor movements of cyclists. It was noted that though initially the data the apps were sharing was all anonymous, more specific identifying details were possible, if people agreed to being monitored through their smartphones if they saw benefits for them.[53]
In 2021, the program got a major overhaul and got renamed Waze for Cities (W4C).
Waze might suggestdriving through neighborhoods (cut-through traffic) to avoid traffic jams on main roads.[54]
Concerns have been expressed that the app on smartphones can be used to monitor movements by identifiable individuals.[53] In December 2014, in a letter sent to Google,Los Angeles Police Department ChiefCharlie Beck complained about the police locator feature, claiming it could be "misused by those with criminal intent to endanger police officers and the community". It was alleged that Ismaaiyl Brinsley, whoshot and killed two NYPD officers that month, had used the Waze app prior to the murders and had posted a screenshot from the app on his Instagram account hours before the shootings, but that was unsubstantiated as the post was made three weeks prior to the shootings.[55] Users are able to mark the presence of an officer with a small icon and indicate if the officer is visible or hidden. The LAPD, among other police agencies, pressured Google to disable the feature on the application. Google states that knowing the whereabouts of an officer promotes safer driving.[56][57]
When a driver approaches a reported traffic situation, Waze prompts an alert and asks to confirm whether the hazard still exists, distracting the driver and increasing the risk of a crash.[58] It also encourages and incentivizes drivers to report traffic events while driving, also causing distraction. Users can disable these notifications or specific type of traffic hazards. The dialog about the hazard existing is optional for the driver to respond.
In 2016, researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara discovered a Waze vulnerability that allowed them to create false traffic congestion events and to track the movements of Waze users. The attacks were based on weak location authentication, which allowed researchers to create software-basedSybil devices that reported fake traffic events and location data to the Waze servers and obtain information about nearby drivers in response.[59]
In 2019, security researcher Peter Gasper reported two information disclosure vulnerabilities in the Waze Live Map, the web-based version of the navigation software.One vulnerability allowed tracking of users using a unique identifier associated with the driver icon while the second vulnerability enabled partial de-anonymization of the users by recovering the username from the unique identifier. Google acknowledged and subsequently fixed the issue while paying out the bug bounty reward.[60]
Waze Mobile Ltd holds several patents.[61][62][63] The Waze v2.x software was distributed underGNU General Public License v2, which did not extend to map data.[64] The base map data initially came fromUS Census BureauTIGER data. FreeMap[65] data was not published under open content licenses even before the shift to Waze project. Ehud Shabtai who initiated and developed Freemap and Waze continuously insisted to crowdsource data without using external sources or projects likeOpenStreetMap that would restrict commercialization of the Waze map data.[66]Starting with Waze v3 the application was rewritten and as such switched to a proprietary license.[67] The lastopen-source client version for the iPhone and Android is 2.4.0.0, and for Windows Mobile 2.0.[68][69]
Aclass action suit was filed in March 2014 by accountant Roey Gorodish against Waze, claimingintellectual property violation for the use of open-source FreeMap map and code from the open-source RoadMap software,[70] a project that Ehud Shabtai had contributed for the WindowsPocketPC version in 2006.[71][72][73] The lawsuit was dismissed on March 5, 2017, with a clear-cut decision that there was no basis for a class action suit in this case. The lawsuit was dismissed again with final verdict given by the Israeli Supreme Court on 28 January 2019.[74]
Waze is discontinuing its integration with Google Assistant on iPhones due to ongoing issues that have persisted for over a year. The feature will be phased out in favor of a new voice integration solution, likely Gemini, which Google is transitioning to across its devices.[73]
Door Waze te gebruiken, is er meer sluipverkeer op de Belgische wegen. Als er file staat op een snelweg, leidt Waze de gebruikers naar kleinere wegen, om de files te vermijden.[Because of Waze, there is more cut-through traffic on Belgian roads. If there is a traffic jam on a motorway, Waze directs users to smaller roads to avoid the congestion.]
Tracking Waze drivers with UI elements.
