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Turns Out Nobody Believed Waze Could Be a Game-Changer, And Look Where It Is Today

While Waze is currently one of the most popular navigation apps in the world, few people know how it came to be back in 2007.
Waze on iPhone 10 photos
Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
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Uri Levine, the man who helped Waze see daylight (and who left the company when it was purchased by Google in 2013), detailed the early days of the application in a recent interview, explaining that at first, nobody believed such a concept would work.

At a time when Google Maps was nothing more than a display map and everybody was still using GPS navigation devices, such as the ones from Garmin and TomTom, Waze certainly looked like a crazy idea.

With users that were supposed to power the map data and provide other motorists with information on what was happening on the road, Waze was considered an out-of-this-world project with zero chances of succeeding.

Levine explains that the idea that brought Waze to life was that a navigation app needed not only to guide users to a defined destination but also to help them deal with the traffic. And because avoiding traffic jams wouldn’t be possible without real-time time information, Levine and his team came down to a simple conclusion: they needed a solid user base to power the entire experience.

At the beginning, everyone told me this will never work, right? And these were the nice guys. The lesser nice guys, they told me, this is the stupidest idea that I ever heard,” Levine explains.

Obviously, the early days of Waze weren’t necessarily easy and it took years for the app to go international. The application, which started as a community project known as FreeMap Israel, was originally supposed to be used only in Israel. The global demand for more advanced capabilities brought Waze overseas as well, so in 2011, the application was updated with a set of other innovative features, including support for points of interest, once again provided by the community.

In 2013, Waze finally caught the attention of Google, with the search giant ending up paying no more, no less than $1.3 billion for the company. Since stepping under Google’s umbrella, however, Waze has continued to operate independently, despite many industry analysts calling for integration into Google Maps.

Most recently, Google has moved the Google Maps and Waze teams under the same roof, and while many believe this is a big step towards the highly anticipated merger, this doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, Google wants the two teams to work together even closer, eventually being able to collaborate on features that would make their way to both navigation apps.

Waze, the app that nobody believed in, continues to be entirely focused on the navigation experience, while Google Maps has evolved to become an almighty app with more capabilities, including business information, street-level imagery, and details on how crowded a certain location is at any given time.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
Bogdan Popa profile photo

Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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