Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will merge the teams working on its various mapping service like Google Maps, with Waze, the company it purchased in 2013 for $1 billion, as it plans to consolidate similar businesses and reduce costs.
Google will integrate Waze into Google Geo, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.
Neha Parikh, the Waze CEO, will exit the company following a transition period, but Google said that Waze, with about 151 million monthly active users worldwide, will continue to be a standalone app.
According to a spokeswoman, Google plans to merge Waze’s more than 500 employees with the company’s Geo organisation, which oversees the Maps, Earth and Street View products, beginning on Friday (December 9).
“Google remains deeply committed to Waze’s unique brand, its beloved app and its thriving community of volunteers and users,” said the spokeswoman.
“By bringing the Waze team into Geo’s portfolio of real-world mapping products, the teams will benefit from further increased technical collaboration.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, in July, said the company would streamline processes and consolidate investments where they overlap. According to Wall Street Journal, Pichai has looked for areas to improve efficiency following a slowdown in advertising growth this year. In September, Pichai said he wanted Google to become 20 percent more productive and indicated the company could merge teams working on overlapping products.
Waze has more than 151 million monthly active users on its crowdsourced mapping service, which is known for maintaining detailed traffic data. The service operated largely independently from Google Maps following the acquisition, though Google has integrated some popular features from Waze into the flagship product.
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