Google combines Maps and Waze teams as pressure mounts to cut costs

The teams that work on Google’s Maps product and on Waze, a mapping service that Google acquired in 2013, are going to be combined, according to Google’s plans.

According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, the search engine behemoth is reportedly under the pressure to cut expenses and consolidate operations, which led to the merger.

Beginning on Friday, the team of approximately 500 people who work on Waze will be integrated into Google’s Geo group.

This organisation is responsible for Google Maps, Earth, and Street View. The current CEO of Waze, Neha Parikh, has decided to step down from her position.

According to WSJ, Google has stated that it intends to maintain Waze as an independent service.

Waze is well-known for its crowdsourcing of information regarding sites along routes, such as speed cameras, police cars, and roadkill.

Google also said that it does not plan to lay off any employees as a result of the restructure.

Even so, layoffs are common in the tech industry, whether you work for a startup or Amazon. Additionally, they strike the hardest in areas where there is overlap between different teams.

In fact, Google has stated that it anticipates that the reorganization of the various mapping services will result in a reduction in the amount of mapmaking overlap.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, has stated that he intends to increase Google’s productivity by 20% by having the company operate “on less resources.”

At the Code Conference in September, an executive stated that the company has grown less productive as a result of excessive hiring, and she seemed to imply that merging teams that work on products that overlap would help the company remain at the forefront of its industry.