The Geo division will absorb 500 Waze employees and he said he hopes the restructuring will reduce overlapping mapping work between Waze and Maps products.
However, this will not have noticeable changes in the final experience for users, as both applications will continue to work independently.
Google and its alliance with Waze
In 2013, the search giant acquired the Israeli mapping service for $1.3 billion.
At that time, the app had 47 million users and had received $67 million in funding from companies including Blue Run, Ventures, Magma, Vertex, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Horizon Ventures.
From there, Google began including Waze updates in Google Maps.
Until then, Google had made it clear that Waze’s operations would remain in Israel. At that time, they had approximately 110 employees and only 10 were located in a modest office in Palo Alto.
In turn, in February 2013, Waze won the Global Mobile Awards as “Best Overall Mobile App”, a category in which applications such as Dropbox and Flipboard, among others, were also nominated. The award was given by the GSMA at the Mobile World Congress event.