 "Google paid $966 million for Israeli mapping start-up Waze")
After keeping it under wraps for the longest time, Google has revealed that it shelled out a whopping $966 million to purchase Israeli mapping start-up Waze. Google finalised the deal to buy Waze in June and the price amount being speculated during the time was in the vicinity of $1 billion.
Google revealed in a financial filing on Thursday that it spent $1.31 billion on 16 acquisitions in the first half of the year, most of which was splurged on picking up Waze. All Things D had previously speculated that the buyout was closed at $1.1 billion, which included an estimated $100 million in performance payouts to staff. This amount seems to be over and above the $966 million and hence was probably not added to the filing.
Google shelled out big bucks
“In June 2013, we completed our acquisition of Waze Limited (Waze), a provider of a mobile map application which provides turn-by-turn navigation and real-time traffic updates powered by incidents and route information submitted by a community of users, for a total cash consideration of $966 million,” the filing by the Internet giant reads. “The acquisition is expected to enhance our customer’s user experience by offering real time traffic information to users’ daily navigation needs.”
Waze is essentially a GPS-based, real-time service that provides turn-by-turn navigation. It relies on crowdsourced route details, including information about traffic, accidents and more. Google jumped in on attempting to purchase Waze in June after discussions between the mapping company and social networking giant Facebook fell through. According to reports, Waze was not willing to relocate its Israel-based engineering team to Facebook’s headquartes.
Besides Waze, Google also picked up Makani Power and Wavii along with some other companies, costing $344 million. It also ended up selling a company of its own – Motorola Home, in the first half of 2013.
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