Waze disappoints me because it's a great idea in what appears to be the classic Google death cycle. They haven't added anything in years except for ads, the long-standing UI blemishes are never fixed, and recently the servers have started returning errors regularly, which probably means they're about to discontinue it.
Always sad when a big company kills an idea, but it happens a lot.
For me the really sad thing about this is thinking about all that community collected data. If a company manages to attract a community of people volunteering and contributing data, it's wrong for that to be taken away. Hopefully it won't be taken away completely in this case, but if the app is phased out, then you'll just have to hope your data shows up within google maps in some form. You're at their mercy. The data was collected by the community but it never belonged to the community.
There's a broad principle here which I think we need to be more collectively savvy about. Community "Crowd sourcing" should always go hand-in hand with community ownership of the data. This means open licensing and offering of bulk downloads. There needs to be increased awareness, and strong campaigns against the behaviour of companies who recruit a volunteer community, but don't give the data back (and I mean give it back properly, in a raw unencumbered open-licensed form)
Waze is not the worst example of this because I think a lot of waze contribution is in the form of very passive data collection. The value comes from algorithms rather than dedicated passionate contribution from volunteers. But even so. The community puts data in. The community loses the data in the end.
It's a bit of a shame that they're not independent of Google, but I would have sold out too for that sort of money. I use Waze everyday to avoid traffic and even when I do end up in a jam it lets me know how long I've got to sit through it.
Well thanks to antitrust concerns they are pretty much independent and it still has the same awful UI and bugs of the app before it was sold. Really wish it could benefit from Google Maps (especially for POI search!).
I found waze pretty bad at directing you to your target and pretty amazing at locating jams. I stopped using it for directions when I visit Israel although many people there use it religiously. Google maps on the other hand was great at taking me there, but less so knowing about the road conditions. After the buyout I noticed Google maps gets a lot better at knowing if the road is blocked by traffic and how long a stretch of jammed Road takes to clear. I think that marriage worked well, at least for my driving experience.
Yes, Waze is a religion in Israel, perhaps because traffic conditions there are so unexpected. While on vacation there recently I downloaded the app, but found it unusable. The amount of noise in the UI - alerts, ads, IMs from other drivers - is unbearable.
I find that Google Maps is simple, clean, and quite accurate in predicting time to destination. Plus, now it displays traffic jams and incidents signaled by Waze users.
For driving near Paris, Waze is incredibly effective. I think it is caused by the mass effect: Paris is a permanent traffic jam and many people are using waze. In less crowded area, data access is not reliable. As a result waze behaves badly, worse than a ordinary GPS with traffic information.
The part about dilution was interesting. I looked at several tech startup IPO filings and it "appeared" to me that most founders ended up with 4 to 7% in equity. Also in nearly all cases, there is one VC who owns more than 20% of the company.
Pretty standard in my opinion. Depending on your negotiability, you're going to get diluted 10-40% in every round. Do that a few times, and you can see where one ends up :)
One of my closest friends was the founder / CEO of Trapster - Pete Tenereillo - who was crushing Waze for years in total MAU.
Trapster was originally positioned @ speed trap avoidance but as they grew to tens-of-millions of users their feature set more closely mirrored Waze (or vice versa?).
Trapster was eventually scooped up and killed by Nokia (1), is there any true competitor to Waze @ this point?
I would like to give a counterpoint to the opinion that Google Maps' quality has dwindled, from a developing nation perspective from having used it in India, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa.
Google maps in these countries has easily slipped inside the daily behavior of people in these countries in a way that is heartening to see - Drivers use it, students use it, hotels use it to show the way about town, bus drivers use it. It is amazing how accurate it is in these countries. I am thankful it exists.
Can you start turn by turn navigation in those countries? In Vietnam, although the maps are more than good enough, you can only preview a route, you can't actually start the route tracking. This is very frustrating if you're on a motorbike where the voice instructions and vibrations would be very useful.
I use Waze every day, but I fear that Google will eventually kill off their Windows mobile app because they despise Microsoft. Right now they have just stopped updating it. A shame, really, because it's a solid app.
It will eventually break once they evolve the server-side APIs enough. Foe example, I doubt the Symbian client still works...
The really annoying things is that even after Microsoft makes it painfully easy for Android apps to be brought into Windows 10, Google probably still won't do it.
[+] [-] acdha|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomphoolery|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harry-wood|10 years ago|reply
For me the really sad thing about this is thinking about all that community collected data. If a company manages to attract a community of people volunteering and contributing data, it's wrong for that to be taken away. Hopefully it won't be taken away completely in this case, but if the app is phased out, then you'll just have to hope your data shows up within google maps in some form. You're at their mercy. The data was collected by the community but it never belonged to the community.
There's a broad principle here which I think we need to be more collectively savvy about. Community "Crowd sourcing" should always go hand-in hand with community ownership of the data. This means open licensing and offering of bulk downloads. There needs to be increased awareness, and strong campaigns against the behaviour of companies who recruit a volunteer community, but don't give the data back (and I mean give it back properly, in a raw unencumbered open-licensed form)
Waze is not the worst example of this because I think a lot of waze contribution is in the form of very passive data collection. The value comes from algorithms rather than dedicated passionate contribution from volunteers. But even so. The community puts data in. The community loses the data in the end.
[+] [-] aembleton|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonknee|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciconia|10 years ago|reply
I find that Google Maps is simple, clean, and quite accurate in predicting time to destination. Plus, now it displays traffic jams and incidents signaled by Waze users.
[+] [-] reacweb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] durga|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aresant|10 years ago|reply
Trapster was originally positioned @ speed trap avoidance but as they grew to tens-of-millions of users their feature set more closely mirrored Waze (or vice versa?).
Trapster was eventually scooped up and killed by Nokia (1), is there any true competitor to Waze @ this point?
(1) http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/01/trapster-shutting-down/
[+] [-] somberi|10 years ago|reply
Google maps in these countries has easily slipped inside the daily behavior of people in these countries in a way that is heartening to see - Drivers use it, students use it, hotels use it to show the way about town, bus drivers use it. It is amazing how accurate it is in these countries. I am thankful it exists.
[+] [-] Colliers|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|10 years ago|reply
I thought it was quite interesting how quickly Apple has come up to speed. Or maybe how slowly Google has been once they started to dominate.
[+] [-] partiallypro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirkneeland|10 years ago|reply
The really annoying things is that even after Microsoft makes it painfully easy for Android apps to be brought into Windows 10, Google probably still won't do it.