In its new update, Google Maps gains support for reports from Waze. Community GPS, which Google bought in 2013, is slowly but surely merging with Google Maps.
The main advantage of Waze appears in Google Maps. Since the end of November, community reporting of events on the road (police, accident, closure) is now shared between the two navigation applications. More precisely, these are the indications that Waze members usually exchange which will now be relayed to the other application.
Our colleagues at 9to5google noted this development on November 30, 2024, by sharing a screenshot with a small notification of a report produced by the Waze community. Notable thing: it is possible to actively contribute to the relevance of the alert, by indicating whether it is still current or not.
Google Maps retrieves alerts from Waze
This ever-increasing interconnection between Google Maps and Waze is the translation of an announcement made this summer.
« To keep other drivers informed on the road, Maps makes it easy to report incidents and useful information, […]. These reports come from the Maps and Waze communities, and you can even see which app they came from », announced Google in a blog post published on July 31, 2024.
In a progress update published the same day, Waze, which knows that any merger with Google can frustrate its community of volunteers, also reported this change. For several years, Google Maps has continued to draw on several of its features from the Waze database.
The addition of this functionality in Maps, however, remains good news, if only for road safety reasons. The Waze community is much more active than that of other applications. It's better for everyone that motorists on Maps are also informed, even if Waze gradually loses its charm.
Are Google Maps and Waze doomed to merge?
With more than 150 million users every month, including around 15 million in France, Waze is not really an application that Google can do without. Community GPS, which started with a blank map filled out by passionate volunteers, is one of the most popular navigation applications in the world. The company's acquisition by Google in 2013 did not end its existence: Waze is still there.
Although it's unlikely that community GPS will ever disappear, Waze and Google Maps are getting a little closer each year. The integration of Waze reports into Google Maps comes two years after the merger of the teams of the two applications. Only the maps and information on the shops differ today: the rest is almost identical.
The strength of Waze is that it relies entirely on the work of volunteers.
Using a map editor, enthusiasts located around the world can draw streets in real time, providing extremely precise work that does not rely on teams of professionals, which would be impossible to have in every city in the world.
In addition to map creators, users also contribute information through their reports. Waze is constantly self-enriching, where competitors like Apple Maps and Google Maps favor a much more classic approach, with professional map managers. They are therefore less up to date than Waze, which knows everything in real time, including the prices of gas stations (thanks to volunteers, who collect everything). By integrating Waze community data into Maps, Google is making its software better without having to do anything. It's hard not to imagine it continuing.
For several years, a convergence of functionalities between Waze and Google Maps can be observed, which questions the interest for Google in keeping the two applications in the very long term. Google's app already used real-time information from Waze users to predict traffic jams or problems, without displaying the reports on the map. Google Maps also has access to Waze Beacons, a network of Bluetooth trackers in tunnels designed to prevent losing GPS underground.
In short, the line between software is becoming increasingly thin, with Waze increasingly used to provide data to Google. Waze is unlikely to disappear quickly, but its interest may be increasingly limited.
