2013, Google completed the acquisition of Waze for a reported US$1.3 billion. There are only 100 employees.
Basic:
1) community-driven navigation application
2) only on mobility phones
3) real-time information sharing software
4) location-based services, e.g. gas
Development Platform:
Various: iPhone and Android (majorly)
Project Target:
Solve the challenges (high map update cost and information delay) by using communities.
1) Community activeness is the key and the most valuable in this project.
2) Everything (GUI, Function and Fun) is about user activity.
System Design & Key Concepts:
1) Turn-by-turn Navigation
2) User Trajectory&Speed Uploading (updating map)
3) Real-time Road Information Update
4) User Activeness
GUI:
Recent Updates:
*In 2011 Waze Mobile updated the software to display real-time, community-curated points of interest.
*In June 2012 Waze launched an update to provide real-time fuel prices.
*In June 2013, Waze introduced a global localization project that will enable future road closures and real-time traffic updates.
Success?
Yes, it is a very successful project. The success is based in:
1) Its fundamental idea to do it is great (Great Idea) and hard to achieve (Great Leader) and hard to compete (even Google has no confident to beat it).
2) It captures user activeness. (Great Designer)
However, it meet with the monetizing problem, which is everywhere in map apps (even Google Map, Baidu Map, and off course Apple Maps and Microsoft Maps).
Bought by Google, I think it is double-benefits:
For Waze, it can use Google Ad to get incomes (Location-based Ads) from its massive users.
For Google, it can avoid another competitor. (1B is a bit too much)
Future
In my view, Waze has achieved what it planned to do.
Its functions are complete.
The future is to make it world-widely used and making money.
Finally
This post focuses on high-level system design. So, the user activeness attraction is not included.
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