Looks like another big-name mobile app company is joining the Google family. Google announced today on its official blog that it's acquired Waze, a community-based mapping service that gathers traffic and road information from users to help keep their maps and route info up to date. Google says that the Waze team will remain in Israel and operate as a separate entity "for now," but El Goog does say that it plans to utilize Waze traffic data to improve Google Maps, enhance Waze with Google's own search tech and to work with the Waze community to give it what it needs to "grow and prosper."
Google Maps has been getting quite a bit of love lately; Google recently announced a fresh, new look for its mobile and web versions of Maps, and now the service will be enhanced with data from Waze. There aren't a lot of specifics available about Google's plans for Waze right now, but judging from Google's announcement of the news today, it sounds like users of both Google Maps and Waze have something to get excited about. Have you ever used Waze?
