Google is merging the teams working on Maps and Waze, what will change?

The search engine seems to want to make some savings by integrating the employees of Waze to its own navigation application teams.

Since 2013, Google has owned the Waze app. And the American company has always been careful to distinguish between Google Maps and Waze, although the two navigation applications have shared information and technologies.

Google regroups its navigation teams to save money

The recent financial crisis that has shaken the planet has changed the situation. According to information from wall street journalGoogle has decided to bring together the Waze teams within its branch dedicated to software and navigation projects, Google Geo.

The 500 employees working on the operation and improvement of Waze will thus join the developers working on Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Street View.

This measure should allow Google to make some savings. Indeed, the search giant would thus avoid work carried out identically on the two applications. The teams would thus share their progress to work more efficiently on the two software simultaneously.

With declining advertising revenue, Google, like all tech giants, needs to cut costs to get through the crisis. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, also indicated last September that he wanted the company to be ” 20% more efficient than today. Several projects will be buried to refocus on the company’s core business, namely research and its advertising activity.

Waze will remain a separate app from Google Maps, despite this reorganization

Will Google Maps and Waze actually merge? Do not panic for fans of the mobile application, Google has indicated that it wants to keep its two platforms, independent of each other. ” Google remains deeply committed to Waze’s unique brand, beloved app, and thriving community of volunteers and users. “, said a spokesperson for the American giant at wall street journal.

If Waze has “only” 151 million monthly users compared to the billion people using Google Maps each month, the application offers valuable data to Google such as speed limits, accidents reported by motorists or even traffic zones. danger and road control.

The marriage between Waze and Google is not idyllic, however. Last year, the former CEO of Waze publicly expressed a form of regret over the takeover: “ All of our growth at Waze after the acquisition was due to the work we were doing, not the support of the mothership. Looking back, we probably could have grown faster and much more efficiently if we had stayed independent. “.

Following this new reorganization, the current CEO of Waze, Neha Parikh, will leave her post, but no dismissal is expected. The teams will be under the direct supervision of Google.

Source : Engadget