Battle over Waze to reportedly end with $1.3 billion Google deal

A number of companies including Apple and Facebook have reportedly been considering acquisitions of crowd-sourced mapping and navigation service Waze, but Google may have outspent them all. According to a report on Sunday from Israeli newspaper Globes, Google will announce this week that it has acquired Waze for a whopping $1.3 billion. The Israel-based startup was reportedly very close to a deal with Facebook, however a dispute over whether or not to close Waze’s research and development facilities in Ra’anana, Israel stalled the deal. It is unclear whether or not Google plans to maintain Waze’s Israeli facilities, however a subsequent report from AllThingsD states that Google intends to keep Waze’s service separate from its own mapping solutions for the time being.

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