Google and Waze Reach $1.3 Billion Dollar Deal For Crowd-Sourced Traffic and Navigation Technology

If you were the market's leader in maps, what would you do? If you'd seek out one of the hottest GPS mobile apps, then your train of thought would align to Google's. A deal has been rumored for the past week, but it seems certain today: Google has acquired Waze for a cool $1.1 billion, beating out Facebook to the acquisition.

Waze is a GPS app first and foremost, but it goes beyond the others by crowdsourcing information to make the information it spits back a lot more useful. With it, you can automatically contribute traffic data to the pool, and manually report accidents and other hazards. You'll of course receive that information as well if another user reports it. It's clear, then, why Google would love to own this and likely implement its features into Google Maps, an already well-respected mobile solution (even for use as a GPS).