San Francisco (dpa) - Facebook is close to a $1 billion deal
to buy social mapping firm Waze, according to reports in the US and
Israeli press.
Waze, an Israeli startup, has grown in popularity to some 40
million users with its free navigation tools and crowd-sourced
traffic information.
Buying the mobile map service would enable Facebook to keep its
users longer on its mobile app and boost its mobile ad revenue. It
would also give Facebook its own mapping data - a potentially vital
component of localized advertising.
The potential acquisition was first reported by the Israeli
business site Calcalist and also by the New York Times.
The deal would rival the largest ever done by the social
networking giant which last year paid $1 billion for the
fast-growing mobile photo-sharing service Instagram.
Waze had previously been courted by Apple, whose own attempts at
providing iPhone users with a mapping service ended in a debacle that
boosted the status of the company's great rival Google, whose mapp
applications is the standout industry leader. Apple reportedly
withdrew from a deal for Waze when the company demanded $750 million.
