Facebook buys Waze: Mobile Internet real entrance in electronic map?!

According to several media reports, http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/1560.html ">facebook recently considered the acquisition of Israeli satellite navigation company Waze, the price may be between 8 to 1 billion U.S. dollars, The two sides have already started discussions.

Waze is a navigation app that provides instant traffic to users, up to 44 million this year in April. The company and Facebook are partners, allowing users to share the road message with the people who work with them.

It is said that the discussion has entered into the details of the situation, quite similar to the Instagram acquisition a year ago, when the merger process is fast as lightning, only spend a weekend to finalize the decision. The news was reported by Calcalist, an Israeli website, that the media had reported many acquisitions in the past, but it did not seem to have happened much in the end.

Facebook merger Waze not surprising

Regardless of the credibility of this message, our question is, why is Facebook interested in navigation services?

It's not surprising that Facebook's membership has grown in number from mobile devices over the past few years and is also committed to transforming the mobile market, with more than 750 million people accessing the mobile internet in a month, according to Facebook's earnings report in April.

The lack of confidence in the layout of Facebook's mobile strategy led to the fall in its share price, giving CEO Zack Zuckerberg the idea of creating his own mobile experience as soon as possible. To start, they are going to launch their own smartphones, then give up, then plan to build the operating system, and finally launch home, simply to make every Google Android phone "Facebook."

Clearly, Facebook wants to dominate the action market, but does not want to make its own hardware or operating system from scratch, the result of hitting the top both must be badly beaten; however, from the Google and Apple examples we can see that if you want to really enter the operational operating system, you must have their own map system.

Facebook mobile layout is still missing a

Because the map system is like an inexhaustible repository of information, supplied by the client with inexhaustible data, including their location, habits, preference for businesses and travel destinations, which is why Apple kicked Google Maps to develop its own map products. Google, the leader of the market, has been developing sophisticated mapping software for the past 10 years, and its importance is self-evident.

To catch up, Facebook will naturally want to buy Waze. Waze is an out-and-out social application. First of all, its traffic and location data are passively provided by users, but also the initiative to release accidents, road speed cameras and other warnings. In other words, Waze is an app that provides information through the user's "Watch out", which is right for Facebook's appetite and worth the heavy takeover.

In the future, if the deal is really done, Facebook's own social programs, home plus Instagram and Waze, have three essential mobile apps that are more likely to threaten Google's products in addition to a more complete mobile layout.

A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on the news, saying only: "We do not respond to rumours and speculations." ”

Source: Wired