Using Waze, they're saving time on the road, money on gas, and emissions into the environment - a proposition they really can't turn down. But more than that, drivers use Waze because they feel they are part of a community, working together to overcome the global headache that is traffic.
Noam Bardin
We will continue to make a real impact on drivers globally, helping them save time and money while making everyone's daily commute a bit more efficient and fun.
Advertisers want to get to mobile, and they don't want banner ads.
You can see that tight integration, as Facebook and Twitter now have with iOS, makes the overall user experience better for both the partner and for Apple.
Can we get the average person on his way to work to pick someone up and drop them off once in a while?
It's not in the interest of most mapping companies to make those changes as they occur, but if you give the power to local people, you can be sure that you're always getting the best information from the folks that actually drive those roads every day.
We want to save every driver five minutes a day.
Samsung and Apple seem to think that they're going to provide everything. Apple believes services will drive hardware, while Google wants to own each user regardless of hardware, so you have differing philosophies.
Maps are living, breathing organisms that change on a daily basis: You see it in new roads, bridge closures, and demolitions.
Overall, there isn't much difference between a high-end Android and iOS phone, despite the fact that Android is a knockoff of iOS.
Larry Page, Brian McClendon, and the Google Maps teams have been following our progress closely and are excited about what we've accomplished.
If you turn on ABC 7 in the morning San Francisco, you'll see them using an iPad with Waze on it, and actually talking about.
What search is for the Web, maps are for mobile.
We discovered that there are actually fewer companies actually buying data.
Our original plan when we founded Waze was to sell the data, and we could keep it ad-free that way.
Basically we've taken our data and packaged it for TV station, and in return, they use us on air, and we get distribution.
We struggle with this every single day - will third-party apps have room in the future of ecosystems?
Maybe at the end of the day, instead of a neighbor picking you up, a robot picks you up.
We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world.
If you look at it now from the Google perspective, how do you make billions of dollars? Hundreds of millions doesn't count anymore; how do you make billions? And that's the question we've been tasked. Is this a Google-scale business, or is this a nice business for a startup?
What's been unique about our acquisition is that Google is leaving us independent. That actually means that the company is structured the same... We really are a company within a company.
If you do not have vision to where you want your product to go, you will never get there.
For a start-up company, it is all about the religion of the product's excellence - the success of the product - while for a large corporation, it is the brand. We chose to maintain our start-up image.
