Google Waze Acquisition May End Tipped Facebook Talks

This weekend inside sources have suggested Google to be reaching a deal with the team at Waze, a smart navigation app previously rumored to have been in talks with Facebook for a similar deal. This acquisition has been tipped to be ringing in at $1.3 billion USD while real terms have not yet been revealed. This deal would have Google growing their ability to make Google Maps and Local information both inside and outside the USA an intelligent response environment.

If this deal is verified and made public, it'll be just the newest in overseas company assimilations. While Facebook's deal with Waze – if indeed they did nearly make such a deal happen – would likely have had the Waze company move to the USA to continue business, Google has much more of an ability to keep international groups international. Waze is an Israel-based group, and the vast majority of its employees live outside the USA.

Waze was originally formed back in 2009 and continues to push their own location-based environment for smart devices today. According to Globes, Israel-based publication and source of the acquisition deal tip, Waze CTO Ehud Shabtai "will earn $78 million", president of Waze Uri Levine "will earn $38 million", and VP R&D Amir Shinar "and his brother Gili", strangely enough, "will earn $65 million".

According to Israel-based publication Calcalist, this acquisition of Waze by Google is still subject to due diligence, meaning change could still be in the wings. Both Calcalist and Globes make extra effort to note that Google has acquired at least two Israeli companies in the past: Quix and Labfixiz.

Waze may or may not be entirely shut down and swallowed up by Google if they do indeed end up acquiring them. Recent Google acquisitions such as Wavii have folded the developers and their creations into the larger Google software environment.