Another day goes by, and it seems Google has put its hand up to make another acquisition. This time, Google seems to have won a mini bidding war for Israeli-based Waze. For those who’ve not heard of Waze before, it’s a maps and traffic company with a fairly popular cross-platform GPS application.
Israeli website Globes reports that Waze was being sought by Apple, Facebook and Google, with the Facebook deal falling through because of Facebook’s requirement that the Waze team relocate to California. Apple apparently never got to the stage of making an offer because the price was getting too high.
Google, it seems, was quite happy to rise to that high price, and with offices in Israel already, a history of purchasing into Israeli startups and an already-excellent mapping product that will only benefit from the added technical know-how from the Waze guys. The deal isn’t inked just yet, but it’s probably not far off.
[app]com.waze[/app]
