Google Maps will integrate the best function of Waze

Google's mapping application will display incident reports noted by the Waze user community.

A few months ago, Google announced plans to improve incident reporting in its two GPS applications, bringing Google Maps a little closer to Waze. At the time, Google even revealed its intention to display reports sent by the Waze user community on Google Maps. This news was also confirmed directly on the Waze blog which indicated that “Google Maps [ferait] appear reports from our drivers with attribution to Waze directly in the application.

However, at the time of this announcement, no specific date had been indicated for the deployment of this new feature. However, it seems that things are almost ready, since some users have seen a new type of alerts displayed on Google Maps.

Waze reports appear in Google Maps

On Reddit, a user shared screenshots of Google Maps displaying, during navigation, a pop-up displaying an incident alert coming directly from Waze. On the screenshot shared by a named user Truckin_18Google Maps indeed displays a notice indicating the presence of the police on the route.

Below, a message very clearly indicates that this report comes from Waze, and even suggests confirming, or not, whether the incident is still in progress. To limit the distraction introduced by this alert, it automatically disappears after a few seconds.

However, this new functionality only appears to be deployed to a very limited number of users for the time being. The arrival of Waze reports within Google Maps is excellent news for both applications, as it will allow Google Maps users to benefit from new information in real time about their journey. But this should also greatly benefit the 150 million Waze users who will benefit from alerts updated much more frequently, thanks to the approximately 2 billion users of Google Maps.