As Google deals with pressure to streamline its operations and cut costs, the search giant plans to merge the team working on Waze and the group overseeing its Maps products, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company plans to combine the more than 500 employees of Waze with its Geo organization, the one which oversees the Maps, Earth, and Street View products. The merging will begin on Friday, according to Google's spokesperson.
There Will be No Layoffs, Google Says
According to Google, the company didn't plan to conduct any layoffs as part of the reorganization.
However, Neha Parikh will have to exit her role as Waze CEO following a transition period. The company's spokesperson also said that Google plans to maintain Waze as a stand-alone service.
Waze is a popular application for road directions. It is widely known for its crowd-sourcing of en route information such as locations of speed cameras, cop cars, and roadkill.
According to 9to5Google, the company did not announce changes to the end-user experience as part of the merging of Waze and Maps products.
Google said that the company expects that the restructuring will reduce overlapping mapmaking work across the Maps products and Waze.
In a statement, the company's spokesperson said that Google remains deeply committed to Waze's unique brand as well as its beloved app. Likewise, the company remains committed to the thriving community of volunteers and users.
Meanwhile, following a slowdown in advertising growth this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has explored areas to improve efficiency, according to TechCrunch.
With this, Pichai stated in September that he wanted Google to become 20 percent more productive. Likewise, he also indicated that the company could combine teams working on overlapping products.
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Christopher Phillips Will Lead Geo Organization
Upon merging the two teams, former music technology executive Christopher Phillips will lead the Geo organization that will oversee Waze.
Previously, the service's employees reported to Don Harrison, Google's president of global partnerships and corporate development.
In 2013, Google acquired Waze for $1.1 billion. At that time, it was the company's fourth-largest deal.
Since it was one of the largest deals, it drew scrutiny from regulators including the Federal Trade Commission. However, the agency decided not to challenge the acquisition deal.
Around 151 million monthly active users utilize Waze's crowdsourced mapping service. It is known to maintain detailed traffic data. In recent years, it has also worked to build an advertising business.
Following the acquisition, Waze operated independently from Google Maps. But you will find some popular features from Waze integrated into the flagship product of Google.
It can be recalled that Noam Bardin, the CEO who led Waze through its sale to Google, left the company in 2021 to start Post, a competitor to Twitter, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Later on, Bardin wrote a blog post describing the challenges that he faced after joining Google. According to him, navigating the company's hiring practices and internal bureaucracy is a very different experience for him.
In addition, he wrote in the blog post that Waze could have probably grown faster and much more efficiently if the company had stayed independent.
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