Google is preparing to kill Waze
Firing the sales team = less income = some higher up will see declining profits = it will be killed
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Comments127https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/27/23776329/google-waze-layoffs-adsOpen linkView original on feddit.it
Google kills everything it touches
https://killedbygoogle.com/ is a great site to see them all. It's A LOT.
Damn, I missed the news about Google domains. That sucks. Squarespace domain pricing is typically pretty high.
Switch to cloudflare, they recently started with domains
Oh, nice. I might have to switch my organization over. Thanks!
that’s okay! there are other great alternatives: the folks over at [email protected] generally agree that porkbun is excellent (and i’d agree with them)
Yeah it’s super frustrating too because google was one of the few places that you could get a .dev domain, and square space isn’t exactly the most logical place for a developer’s sight
Of course, because the .dev domain was directly created and operated by them, like .zip and .mov
Anyone selling a .dev domain was just reselling from Google domains under a white label agreement
Wait are we sure about Google domains? I literally just saw an ad for it yesterday.
Confirmed by Squarespace: https://domains.squarespace.com/
Wild they are still running ads
My understanding is they're still around for a few months while they work out transferring everything. They're probably trying to squeeze as much out of it they can.
Marketing team didn't was aware yet or forgot to turn off the campaign when reassigned
For stadia, a game dev said that they were shocked by reading the announcement on Twitter, as they spoke with some stadia engineer about their game port to stadia only three hours earlier
Looks like when Google decides to kill a product, only a few managers know it
I bought a domain from them right before the announcement, should've gone cloudflare
Yeah, I had a domain through Google Domains that I just moved to Porkbun based on this news. Sucks, but Porkbun is cheaper anyway.
Pretty sure if this was any other industry there would be a lot of shit thrown, but because its Google they somehow get away with it.
Wait, why the fuck would they kill off Google Domains? It's incredibly competitive when you compare it to Namecheap and Porkbun imo.
Sold to Squarespace for some reason.
There's probably some scummy reason for it, we just don't know why.
Why are they doing this. Waze was such an amazing tool
They've integrated what they want into Maps navigation. Now they want you to switch and be happy about it.
No they didn't. They show traffic info from Waze in Google Maps, but the navigation is still the old one, not the Waze one.
@[email protected] didn't say Google implemented everything... Only that Google has implemented what Google wants.
Title is clickbait, they are laying off the ads department and using Google's.
I dunno, google has a long history of buying competitors then shutting them down, we are all just anticipating it this time.
Google maps is pretty damn good though - but I do like Waze for road trips
Do Only Harm
Google cross Reddit when?
Well that is unfortunate, Waze is a great community that showed what is possible with crowdsourced information and keeping people from getting as many sepeding tickets
Crowdsourcing proprietary software - it ends the same every time. People should just do OpenStreetMaps instead
If you actually care about crowdsourced information, please consider contributing to your local area in OpenStreetMaps. There's way more to crowdsourcing than just avoiding speeding tickets!
Indeed. I update it regularly through OsmAnd. It even has a google traffic overlay. Waze users can slide over to Magic Earth and start reporting traffic, construction, and speedvtraps over there and automatically start using OpenStreetMaps!
To clarify, does Magic Earth let people mark cops?
If so I assume it only works well in larger cities?
Yes, you can report police cars. The problem with crowdsourced data, is it requires a crowd. This is why I encourage everyone to hype Magic Earth to people who love waze.
I didn't know about this, thanks for letting me know! Definitely prefer providing information to non-proprietary software
Until cities started going "hey, why do they have more info about where our cops are than us" and threatened to sue. Last I heard, that feature was banned in several states.
It's unfortunate how things end up being black listed because of others' inability to adapt.
Then again, another great way to reduce speeding tickets is not speeding.
Seriously ?
Cop are master at putting trap in the worst area possible, like where it goes from 110 to 90 then 110 again over 200 meters.
Is it Tuesday again?
It's a day that ends in '-y'.
Papi
Read the article... It's transitioning to a different ad team, so cost reduction when only one system for ads is needed. I don't think this will be cancelled since their community is actively keeping it alive.
But Google traditionally is operating internal teams as competing teams. So Waze has a great chance of being seen as a "competing" product to Google maps. A customer sent to Waze might be seen as a customer lost to Waze. For example Waze added first the integration with Spotify in 2017, never supported Google play music and only after years it supported YouTube music. If they felt that they were under the same company (they were acquired five years earlier), they should have been integrated Google play music first, Spotify second (or both, GPM was killed three years later).
Regarding the community, i saw a lot of mods doing a lot of unpaid work. And i mean A LOT, they are investing hours of their free time to improve maps for a multi billion corporation. But when I tried to login, i had the impression that it was abandoned since the acquisition. The interface design is very outdated and it's very hard for a regular user to find this place as it's not advertised anywhere (i got the link when I sent a correction to the map from the app)
And corrections appear to be unidirectional. Something that gets fixed or flagged in Google maps doesn't transfer to Waze, but the opposite happens.
Again on Android auto, Waze got split screen support 6 months after it was publicly announced and one year after it was available in the public beta channel on the play store. No communication between the two teams in the same company, the android auto team treated the Waze team as they were some independent company
Seeing Google history, i give 3 years max before they wind down Waze.
Enshitawaze
I'd like to see more Waze features integrated into Google Maps.
A lot of the data is shared back and forth, but yeah the tools are much better in Waze.
The reports of police and obstacles are also super useful and more plentiful then in Gmaps
And that is why Waze has to go away. It's giving people info on cops, so that's becoming politically inconvenient for Google.
But you can also report police speed traps on Google Maps too? (At least in the UK not sure if it differs by country)
Use the ones in Magic Earth.
Same. I'm surprised that they haven't merged the apps years ago. I thought it was only a matter of time, but Waze continued to exist for many years.
Waze is quite a different experience than Google Maps when driving, so it's made sense to keep them as two separate apps.
Google Maps is "I want to get from point A to point B in a normal way."
Waze is "I want the most aggressively quick way; no back street is too small for me."
I feel like OP has gone too far with the editorialised headline this time, as the only thing that's happening at this point is switching Waze over to use the standard Google ad platform rather than their custom system.
Ah I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Oh for fuck sake.
Fuck Google. I used Waze since it didnt need a Google account and was still reasonably popular in my area.
If I have to use a Google account for this shit, I dont know what I'd do.
you already need to use a google account, no? I tried to login again in my new phone, i could only login with google
Kind of an alarmist headline, and not at all what the article says.
Ya, a lot of people here discussing the headline and not the article. They are laying off the ad part of Waze, not stopping development of the app. It is pretty standard to consolidate redundant teams after an acquisition.
This should be the top content. 😕
*Comment Or is there an edit function anywhere..?
Don't state your speculation as fact, it's really bad.
Oof click bait. They're just switching ad teams.
Google: Google remains deeply committed to growing Waze’s unique brand
Also Google: And how are we going to achieve that? By decreasing the workforce that works on waze
Magic earth seems pretty good.
HD traffic and report a cop. Also not google and privacy built.
https://www.magicearth.com/
I'm very impressed about it. I wonder how they're making money if they don't sell traffic data or ads or telemetry. Their server expenses aren't cheap
I had the same thought. So I emailed them and asked last year. Below is the reply:
Hello, We are glad that you like Magic Earth! Magic Earth is free for end users, but we have a paid SDK - you can check generalmagic.com for more info. We have partnerships with companies such as Selectric, Smarter AI, Absolute Cycling etc.
I'm going to give this a try today and see how it goes. Only concern is gmaps routing is probably more advanced... But it probably wouldn't be too bad for trips you know 90%+ of the way.
Magic Earth doesn't work on web browsers so it's a no from me
Do cops still do speed traps? I haven't seen one in years.
Yes they do
Come down to GA where it seems like all they ever do is sit around to speed trap people. And also train as a paramilitary.
Google's business model is basically just killing things you love, right?
Now is the time to start encouraging Waze users to try Magic Earth!
It also has social reporting features, uses open street maps, and has a real privacy policy.
Nice, i hope it doesn't do like maps.me where they slowly enshittified the app
Later I'll check if it has android auto support (if it doesn't, it's DOA)
do you know when support for Android Auto is implemented and working fully?
Just tried it, Android auto support is present and looks well done
Well, it appears it's just been released.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of Magic Earth. I like Waze... Sometimes... But, damn Waze gives some pretty aggressive routes sometimes, especially in big cities.
Classic Google
Is there anyone who didn't see this coming when they first bought Waze?
They surprisingly worked almost independently for a decade, i was expecting that it would be killed in 2015
Looks like ads will start being pushed through the Google Ads manager now. Likely as another placement in Performance Max.
How do we kill Google?
DuckDuckGo
DDG has to get a lot better before that's going to happen, sorry.
DDG has actually been a lot better when searching than Google ever has for me. The top posts aren't always ads, I don't have to keep rephrasing everything to find what I'm looking for, it's been great.
I use DDG as default, it can't find anything.
If you want a better alternative, Kagi is better than Google in my experience.
Kagi is paid unfortunately. That might not be a bad thing but it's going to really hurt adoption when "free" Google still exists.
It's not about mass adoption for me. It's about not giving Google my info to resale. You should do what's best for you, not what is going to get adopted enmass. I do see how you could've taken my recommendation as 'killing google' given the parent comment, though. Unfortunately Google isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but that doesn't mean you have to use it.
I didn't say it's going to kill Google at all.
Huh?
Before what is going to happen then, if you didn't mean kill google?
Degoogle!
In my country Waze is the literal go-to app for drivers.
Waze editor here. Based on the article’s content, this post’s title is a bit of an overreaction. Google would be a fool to kill off a platform with more accurate street maps than its core platform, maintained by a vibrant group of volunteers, at least without creating or migrating those tools over to GMaps.
Oh sweet summer child. Google could turn off waze with no warning. Are you going to switch to bing maps? If every waze member stopped using any google service as a result, would their bottom line be affected in any meaningful way?
The Waze UI is soooo much nicer that GMaps on iOS 😢
Sorry to hear this, I really liked the social aspect of Waze where you could report things you saw on the road.
In fairness this has been built into Google maps now as well
I did previously use Waze but honestly lately Google Maps seems to have overtaken it in functionality
Genuinely surprised they let it live this long. I expected when they acquired Waze that they would gut and dump.
It's been 10 years.
Many years
Shouldn't uneditorilised headlines be a rule around these parts too? Take your hot takes to the comments or the body text.
**Thread locked, massive speculation in title. **
This is a simple consolidation of business units, which always result in job cuts — because consolidating means bringing together teams that have a number of duplicate roles between them.
at this point I'm not sure how any sane person can have trust in a Google product. Things get killed left, right and centre 🪦
I've been slowly phasing out everything Google since Stadia. Stadia was not a huge surprise since they closed off their video game studios - at that point, it was clear that the writing is on the wall (after all, you need lots of investment for a new gaming platform to take off and it became obvious that Google wasn't ready for that commitment). But even if it wasn't a huge surprise, the messaging around it was all wrong: they even said they were not closing it shortly before closing it. They just can't be trusted, and while you could say the same about most companies, Google is arguably worse in this regard than anything else in tech.
Bro whyyyyyyyyyyyy
the article and OP's headline do not match
Right? Layoffs are layoffs, they affected more than just Waze. Waze is being moved into the Maps division so it makes sense (unfortunately) that some jobs become redundant.
I'm sad for this move, but tbh I use Google maps more than Waze.
damn, rip Waze 🥲 never really used it but could see the value
Is there a decent open source alternative for navigation?
osmand - https://osmand.net/ - is open source, their plus app that has more features and android auto support is paid on the play store though.
Can recommend Organic Maps, works great. Its Open Source and with OSM data. But its offline only so you need a lot of free storage space and don't get stuff like live traffic infos, ratings etc.
I've been trying them out. Its pretty good and has a decent OSM editor built in. My main wishes for it would be better integration with ORS routing and some sort of social mapping (ideally federated on ActivityPub using Place objects and notes) for stuff that is not long lasting enough for OSM (for example Waze like traffic and obstacle reporting) as well as discussions for OSM objects since there really isn't a good place for that either.
completely open source, no
I'm shocked to hear. Waze was even updated to properly work with Android Auto's new layout.
I much prefer Waze with Android Auto than Google Maps.
Google Maps reads out every single word and highway number and repeats itself over and over again with directions within seconds of itself. Waze just tells you to turn left or right.
Plus you can report cops, potholes, construction, etc with Waze on the fly with a few touches on my dash screen. Maps only seems to have that if you use Android Auto on the phone screen. Doesn't work in my car.
I'll miss Waze.
Well, there goes my little Halo Warthog as me on my screen. :( Wish there was an app I can just customize that shit how I want.
I wonder if anyone predicted this when Google bought Waze...it's not like Google has a history of killing major projects when they acquire them.
Oh noooo. I much much prefer the way it handles audio directions in Waze to Google Maps.