I agree Google Maps has improved, but I’m not convinced it was directly because of acquiring Waze. Waze UX has dropped so much since acquisition that its almost to the painful point. I also find it’s “user submitted” data (cops, construction, pot holes) has dropped a lot so I feel a lot of folks who were submitting quality data have either left or just stopped submitting as the UX has gotten so bad.
Keyhole is another acquisition in the mapping space that I feel has degraded since being acquired by Google. I was a paying customer of Keyhole and loved it, since becoming free under Google, it’s basically stagnated and some of the features I used are now gone.
> I agree Google Maps has improved, but I’m not convinced it was directly because of acquiring Waze.
They often include Waze reported events in Google Maps now. That was the part that I was referring to. I'm not sure if Google Maps reported issues feed back into Waze as well, but I would expect them to.
I hate to be a cold hard capitalist. But how has improving Google Maps helped its profitability? Would a competitor have taken market share away from Google Maps if they hadn’t acquired Waze? But more importantly, would it have decreased as revenue?
By keeping its competitors utterly uncompetitive. There remains no good alternative to Google's maps for consumers. Waze would have jumpstarted a competitor's mapping efforts.
For stupid acquisitions, look no further than everything Andy Rubin bought, from Motorola to robotics companies.
Apple Maps is so bad that people go out of their way to install another map app even though the OS does not let them properly use the other app as a default.
Nokia Maps pre-existed Waze and wouldn't have benefited from purchasing it.
> Apple Maps is so bad that people go out of their way to install another map app
That used to be the case, but they’ve rapidly improved while Google Maps on iOS has mostly stagnated. There’s feature in Apple Maps on iOS 13 that I find useful that nobody else has even.
> a majority of iOS users are in fact using Apple Maps.
That does not contradict the fact that many people install Google Maps. Reread my comments.
> Btw, you can trigger Google Maps with Siri by creating a simple shortcut and when you search for a place on google.
That does not make it work in all apps.
The app is crippled in iOS, yet people still go out of their way to use it to avoid the dumpster fire that is Apple Maps, many years after Apple Maps launched. If Apple Maps existed on Android, it would have barely any users at all, even though Apple Maps would have access to exactly the same APIs as Google Maps on Android. I'm sure Apple would like to have the traffic data that Android users could provide, but they understand that they can't get that data if nobody uses their app.
