Waze APAC Mobility Academy — 1
- Introduction to Waze
What is Waze?
Waze, a Google subsidiary, is a crowd-sourced navigation app used by 100 million drivers globally.
Waze was founded in 2008 to solve the problem of traditional navigation systems being based on unhelpful, outdated static maps, and it was built to be smarter and more adaptable, with routes based on real-time traffic conditions. Google acquired Waze in 2013.
What is Waze’s Mission?
Since Waze routes are crowd-sourced and collectively GPS-tracked to be as efficient as possible, our key user benefit is to save drivers five minutes a day, every day.
The Waze company mission is “outsmarting traffic, together”.
Waze is programmed to always take drivers on the fastest route to the destination based on real-time road conditions. The Waze algorithm uses GPS tracking and exemplifies strength in numbers. The app’s ability to select the fastest route improves with the density of users in an area.
What are differences between Waze and Google Maps?
Both Waze and Google Maps belong to the Google company, and they do share certain features, but they offer different user benefits.
Waze has built a passionate community of drivers who connect with one another to save time and avoid hazardous traffic and weather while on the road. Waze is the ultimate companion for a driver — we are constantly developing hyperlocal features like license plate routing, hazard alerts and even shelters during natural disasters. And our community of volunteer map editors give us the local pulse of mobility, inspiring product decisions and expediting our response rate in a crisis.
Google Maps provides useful driving directions, and even integrates the incident reporting Waze users provide, but it offers much more than just navigation features. You can explore the world with amazing imagery from Street View, get useful public transit information or walking directions, check out nearby restaurants and attractions once you arrive at your destination, and more.
Waze is the ultimate companion for a driver. Waze users are drivers, and only Waze is the go-to ads platform that could help advertisers to reach consumers when they are on the road.
