According to an Israeli daily newspaper, Facebook is interested in buying a GPS company Waze for a deal up to $1 Billion. The two companies started talking six months ago and the talks are in advance stage. Term sheet was also signed by both companies. So, we can say that the deal is almost final.
Waze is mobile turn-by-turn navigation app that uses crowdsourcing to provide real time road conditions. It has more than 44 million users. Waze and Facebook already partnered back in October 2012. Since that partnership, Waze also lets users to share their drive with Facebook friends.
Facebook always consider popular mobile apps that are useful for its users. It will be interesting to see how Facebook will use Waze in social network. If everything goes fine, it will Facebook’s third acquisition in Israel.
Back in January, Apple was also interested in buying Waze for almost $500 million. But nothing happened. Waze CEO, Noam Bardin thinks that Apple “showed us how to fail” with Apple Maps. He didn’t want to be the part of a big failure. Apple could come back with a higher price but we are not sure about this.
