Waze: Outsmarting Traffic

Being stuck in traffic can be an exasperating and often infuriating experience. The endless amount of cars that do not appear to be moving at any significant rate is enough to make anyone irritated. Enter Israeli-startup company Waze Mobile, which produced Waze, a GPS-based geographical navigation application for smartphones with GPS capability. The app consists of screens which offer turn-by-turn information and user-submitted travel times and route specifics, downloading location-relevant information. The company was purchased by Google in 2013 for an estimated price of 1.3 billion dollars.

Waze emerged with Best Overall Mobile App award at the 2013 Mobile World Congress, and when it was acquired by Google on June 11, 2013, all of Waze's 100 employees received an average of about $1.2 million, which constitutes the largest sum given to employees in the history of Israeli high tech. Below are some recent advances the app has made over the years:

2011: Waze Mobile updated the software to include community-centered events of interest, such as local functions that ranged from street fairs to protests, that were occurring in real-time.

June 2012: Waze launched an update to display fuel prices. 

June 2013: Waze implemented a global project that would allow future road closures and real-time traffic updates during significant events in a certain country, for example, the Tour de France.

Waze's website: https://www.waze.com

Link to article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze

Waze's logo and slogan.
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