Waze won the best overall app award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This might have raised its valuation since the Apple talks were publicized - http://www.globalmobileawards.com/winners-2013/
If they are doing due diligence now, they would need to look into the GPL source code. Waze (at least in the past) was based in part on RoadMap which is GPL - https://github.com/mkoloberdin/waze/
That was version 2-2.4. Now they are at version 3.6, so maybe they rewrote the relevant code.
As far as the R&D centers, this can't be compared, because both those companies (Snaptu, Face.com) were much smaller than Waze. Facebook may be interested in an R&D center in Israel too, and is just looking for an appropriate base on which to build it.
I guess this seems to put Facebook more on a collision course with Google, after Facebook Home.
No clue if this will fall through like the talks with Apple, but it would be awesome if this app became more widely used here in the US. I've heard there are enough users in Israel that drivers can get up to the minute details on traffic, road hazards, cops, etc. on any major road. If Facebook integrated traffic crowdsourcing into everyone's phone, many places would get enough users for this to become viable practically overnight.
In both LA and SF it's pretty much already like that in my experience; LA especially it's traveled by word of mouth - probably because driver's are so desperate to escape the traffic hell.
However, I tend to favor Google Maps unless I'm anticipating significant traffic because Waze tends to pick "over-optimized routes" (i.e. 5 extra turns to save 30 seconds). Which is great when you're trying to escape traffic, annoying when you're just trying to get somewhere normally.
I mostly use Waze to get a good ETA and watch for traffic and police when I'm going somewhere I already know the path to. If I'm going somewhere unfamiliar or not very popular, [TACO BELL AHEAD!] I don't trust it. I've been burned too many times when it sends me 10 minutes of of the way because [TACO BELL AHEAD!] the last intersection before my destination mistakenly doesn't allow a right hand turn.
I've been kind of hoping they and FourSquare would get together somehow.
Seems like they want to cover ground by buying every single startup that is successful and remotely related to social networking. This is where the startup economy falls and monopolies go bad.
the maps and mapping and location accuracy is not all that good though. If Google Maps allowed some kind of plug-ins or layers that supported speed trap reporting Waze would be done.
Battery suck on Waze for frivolous reasons is massive. No one uses it for much else than cop tracking.... sometimes to send out directions to friends and groups, but that is also something that Google could do when that day comes around when they get their glass studded head out of their nether-regions.
You'll use it when and if Facebook buys it? That makes no sense. I can also promise you you will stop using it once you figure out that it's not really useful beyond reporting and being warned of cops.
There are alternatives for reporting cops, but they are also not really all that great of a tool.
Obviously, this is not the value of the income stream. Facebook's own valuation is not the value of its current income stream either. These valuations are bout potential and about competition. Potential to have a huge business created around them and fear of the competition buying the target.
IMO, Facebook has two big important things it needs to do: (a) Maintain its position the the social network where everyone has an updated profile & (b) figure out their ad business. Anything with real potential to impact those two is a potentially important buy. Instagram was/is a way to do the first by keeping people's photos on "facebook". Waze is a little less clear, but it has potential to meaningfully impact both. I can think of several paths that the buy could impact either A or B in a way that increases the total value of Facebook by more than $1b^.
I agree that valuations seem arbitrary when it's users, data & synergies instead of NPV (or book value). But that just means it's hard to put a number on it. It's just as hard to say that it's too high as it is to say it is too low.
^BTW, Facebook's market cap is currently $64b. Assuming they belive in that valuation, an acquisition that raises facebook's value by 2% is a good idea.
$1 billion for this app ? Wonder why fb is buying it. FB can build it on their own. Last year at a hackathon me and my friends made a similar app in 2 days. The feedback we got from people and judges made us to drop the idea to move forward with it.
Waze is incredibly powerful if you're in a city with many users / high-density of cars. If Instagram can be worth $1B, I can certainly see Waze being worth at least as much. They have both users and awesome technology. Also, it's really hard to get mapping right (as Apple found out), so if Facebook wants to enter this space, it would be a powerful jumpstart. (also, the social aspects of Waze might tie in nicely with FB).
What are you talking about. There are shit-tons of people where I use it on the east coast. When I'm in the fly-over states it's not all that great for speed trap reporting because there's just not the saturation, but it seems to be spreading quite nicely in bigger cities there too.
Although, I do have to say it feels like there are less users now than before some of the recent updates that seem to have really kind of messed with the mapping and routing.
I don't understand the value of Waze when anonymized cellular phone data provides real-time, high resolution congestion data for any place that has cellular phones, which is basically the entire globe.
With some of the recent updates, mapping and routing has just gotten worse and essentially useless, so I just use it to tag and be warned of cops checking speed while using Google for actual directions.
I am confident that any company capable of paying $1B dollars for them will cut it immediately. If that's the core value of the product, it either won't get bought or won't survive getting bought.
This would actually put them head to head with Google on the street navigation front. One advantage of Waze is how the routes are dynamically updated by it's own users.
I use waze daily for my commute and it's saved me tons of time. If FB buys it that's the last I'll use it.
(and in response to the "why all the FB hate" comment: I don't hate FB. I used it rather a lot. However, I try to limit the amount of information FB knows about me as much as reasonably possible. Where I am nearly up-to-the-minute, and not only current and historical location data as well as a decent ability to predict where I'm going on most given days, that's too much information for me to willingly hand over to FB. Or anyone.
Waze knows where I am, but not necessarily who I am.
FB knows who I am, but not necessarily where I am.
I don't participate in the FB ecosystem at all and do not want to use an app that forces me in - either through a mandatory requirement (..you must now have an FB account to use Waze..), or simply because I use the app and therefore FB can identify me by Waze nickname, forum account details and current location.
Facebook's long and troubled history with personal privacy, and tendency to combine disparate bits of personal data in ways that some people find invasive.
It's interesting that the big tech sumo-wrestlers seem content to outsource R&D and then stomp in with huge buy-out sums when something great surfaces.
Apple with its billions apparently isn't interested in exploring disparate R&D projects beyond their core interests. Microsoft apparently is and isn't having much luck. Google used to but not so much anymore, and is producing glasses. Facebook is voraciously subsuming R&D and design talent.</stereotypes>
Does seem like they mainly would prefer to pay an exorbitant fee for the gold nuggets, rather than fund all the failures in-house.
Escape traffic? The Government says never!
City traffic is worth more than $1B dollars. I am surprised that BP is not buying this to shut it down the next day.
I greatly prefer Waze. The biggest annoyance for me was that Android doesn't have a way to default to "avoid tolls", so every time I started up, I had to dig into the settings or risk a momentary distraction putting me on a toll road.
Waze has more of an interactive experience (with the ability to report hazards and backups, and some random reward system), but it is more of a focused app than Google Nav.
If they are doing due diligence now, they would need to look into the GPL source code. Waze (at least in the past) was based in part on RoadMap which is GPL - https://github.com/mkoloberdin/waze/
That was version 2-2.4. Now they are at version 3.6, so maybe they rewrote the relevant code.
As far as the R&D centers, this can't be compared, because both those companies (Snaptu, Face.com) were much smaller than Waze. Facebook may be interested in an R&D center in Israel too, and is just looking for an appropriate base on which to build it.
I guess this seems to put Facebook more on a collision course with Google, after Facebook Home.