Google Expands Its Boundaries, Buying Waze for $1 Billion

2:13 p.m. | Updated Added comments from Waze’s chief executive.

Google announced Tuesday that it had closed its deal to buy Waze, a social mapping start-up that features real-time traffic data provided by users to help drivers find the fastest route to a destination.

Google did not disclose the purchase price in its blog post announcing the deal. But a person familiar with the transaction said the price was $1.03 billion.

As I wrote in an article published Tuesday, the deal highlights the increasing importance of location data in our on-the-go lives, whether it is finding a place to eat or navigating an unfamiliar road.

Waze has drawn a particularly passionate base of nearly 50 million users around the world. In any given month, about one third of them turn on the app to access the company’s directions. Waze passively tracks their movements via GPS to generate live information about roads and traffic. And users can add their own information about accidents, police speed traps and road hazards to share with others.

Google said that Waze will remain separate from its own Maps service. Some of Waze’s real-time traffic data will feed into Google Maps, however, and Google plans to incorporate its powerful search capabilities into Waze.

“We’ll also work closely with the vibrant Waze community, who are the DNA of this app, to ensure they have what’s needed to grow and prosper,” Brian McClendon, the Google vice president responsible for its geographic products, said in the blog post.

Google and Waze declined to make any executives available for an interview.

But in his own blog post, Waze’s chief executive, Noah Bardin, said, “Nothing practical will change here at Waze. We will maintain our community, brand, service and organization - the community hierarchy, responsibilities and processes will remain the same.”

Mr. Bardin indicated that he and other Waze employees plan to remain with the company. And its product development team will be allowed to remain in Israel, where the company has most of its operations.

He said the company had considered staying independent and selling stock in an initial public offering to raise money to expand but decided that “Google is committed to help us achieve our common goal and provide us with the independence and resources we need to succeed.”

Cuban Blogger Who Reveres Castro Pushes for Reform

Elaine Díaz may be the most important Cuban dissident you’ve never heard of. But that is perhaps because she doesn’t even call herself a dissident.

Ms. Díaz is a leader of a group of Cubans who are opening a new avenue for criticism in a country that, for the last 50 years, has offered its citizens only two options: with us or against us. Ms. Díaz insists that there is a third way. “Cuba has a lot to change,” Ms. Díaz said during a visit to New York last week, “but I don’t think you need to destroy the system to create something new.”

That’s a convenient view, because that system is paying her salary.

A 28-year-old professor of journalism at the University of Havana, a public institution, Ms. Díaz is essentially an employee of the state. That has not stopped her from writing publicly and with disarming directness about the challenges of daily life in Cuba on her blog, La Polémica Digital, for the last five years. She is young, progressive and fiercely loyal to the Cuban government. But she says she is also determined to reform a socialist system that no longer works as well as it used to for the common man.

The delicacy of that relationship is not lost on Ms. Díaz. “I’ve been scared that maybe I’d write something that would be interpreted the wrong way,” she said, “and that I would be punished, or lose my job.”

She has managed to set herself apart in an increasingly cluttered Cuban blogosphere, earning respect for her thorough reporting and simple, moving prose. Last year she traveled abroad for a meeting of global bloggers in Nairobi, and last month she arrived in the United States for the annual Latin American Studies Association conference in Washington.

So far, Ms. Díaz said, she hasn’t heard a peep from the authorities about her writing. Indeed, the government has been surprisingly tolerant of Ms. Díaz and her colleagues - loosely affiliated under the moniker Bloggers Cuba - a fact that some experts attribute to the group’s willingness to self-censor.

Ted Henken, an expert on social media in Cuba, called these younger bloggers “silent dissidents,” adding, “Their big problem is that they’re constantly biting their tongue.”

Cuba’s more famous and far more radical critic, Yoani Sánchez, shares that view. When Ms. Díaz abruptly took a leave from her blog last August, Ms. Sánchez speculated that she had been forced off the keyboard by a government that had lost patience with her.

Ms. Sánchez, taking a jab at Ms. Díaz’s ties to the government, called her the “official Cuban blogger” and wrote that “Elaine Díaz has transgressed the limits of criticism permissible” for an employee of the state. Ms. Díaz insists that she stopped writing only to focus more intently on her teaching, and she has since resumed the blog.

But Ms. Díaz does acknowledge that there are taboo subjects, like the state of education or health care, that she is hesitant to discuss casually. “If I go to a dirty hospital, I’m not going to write about it,” she said, “because I have a commitment to the system.” Universal health care and free education are seen as the revolution’s most significant success stories, which makes it imperative to keep them intact, even as they quickly become well-worn myths.

In fact, for government loyalists like Ms. Díaz, it seems that, as you get closer to the core of the communist narrative holding Cuba together, the space for genuine debate shrinks. Rattling off a series of topics that she would be careful about touching, Ms. Díaz paused before the kicker: “Fidel Castro, for example, is sacred to us,” she said in an almost reverent tone. “At least in the world that I move around in, there’s a respect and historical gratitude” toward him.

“He’s a figure that, when you launch into criticism, it’s very difficult,” she added.

That approach may be more cautious than the tack taken by Ms. Sánchez and more extreme elements of the opposition, but that doesn’t mean it should be discounted. “It’s as important or more important when people who consider themselves believers express criticism because they can’t be as easily disqualified as people on the out and out, in the opposition,” said Mr. Henken, the expert on Cuba’s Internet. “Yoani is the acerbic agnostic, whereas Elaine is the critical believer,” he added.

Even the United States government is taking notice. Last month, Conrad Tribble, the deputy chief of the United States Interests Section in Havana, Washington’s diplomatic outpost in Cuba, made an unannounced visit to a public meeting of what The Associated Press called “Cuba’s pro-government Twitteratti.”

A brief video clip of the encounter posted on Crónicas de Cuba, the journalist Jorge Legañoa Alonso’s blog, showed Mr. Tribble, sporting a fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, saying he had come to talk with the group about things that the United States and Cuba share â€" “baseball, music, et cetera” â€" and on issues in dispute.

Video of an American diplomat interacting with Cuba’s “Twitteratti” in Havana last month, posted on YouTube by Jorge Legañoa Alonso, a journalist and blogger.

His presence was an olive branch in a diplomatic relationship where engagement on both sides has consisted mainly of covert operations and official bluster. It was also a sign of the growing influence of this corps of young bloggers, whom the State Department wants to cultivate a relationship with, despite their pro-Castro bent.

Ms. Díaz, who could not make the meeting but has interacted with Mr. Tribble on Twitter this year, said she appreciated the gesture.

@conradtribble Espero tengan la oportunidad de rectificar estos casos que limitan la libertad de intercambio académico entre ambas naciones

â€" Elaine Díaz (@elainediaz2003) 8 Apr 13

“He didn’t go there to make a speech or convince anyone, or try to impose anything,” she said. “He’s welcome. Any steps toward a closer engagement between the United States and Cuba, even if they’re small, are good.”

Ms. Díaz would know. In the two weeks she has spent in the United States, she said, “there have been moments that have changed my life, and have nearly made me cry.”

She recalled arriving at the Miami airport and being handed a cellphone by a stranger who saw that she was lost. Or a man in New York City who walked her to her host’s house when she was lost in a sea of apartment buildings in Washington Heights.

“I had the impression that in the United States, no one cares what you have to say, no one will talk to you, everyone is absorbed in their own world,” she said, adding that the image of “a very individualistic culture, it’s not what I’ve found.”

When she returns to Cuba in a week, Ms. Díaz said she would write about the experience on her blog. For now, she’s enjoying her stay in enemy territory.

Positive Response to New iPhone Antitheft Feature

Thefts of Apple iPhones have become so widespread that the police have coined the term “Apple picking” to describe the crime. Apple says it has come up with a solution for the problem, and legal officials are already showing thanks to the company.

Apple on Monday said its next mobile operating system, iOS 7, due out in the fall, will include a feature called Activation Lock that should help deter theft. The feature disables the iPhone even if a thief has turned it off or erased the data on the phone. It can be reactivated only after the user logs into it with the right Apple ID and password.

George Gascón, the district attorney of San Francisco, and Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, have been pushing smartphone makers to do more to protect customers. They have arranged a meeting in New York on Thursday with representatives from Apple, Motorola Mobility, Samsung and Microsoft to discuss ways to deal with the issue.

After hearing about Apple’s Activation Lock, Mr. Gascón and Mr. Schneiderman issued this joint statement:

‘Apple Picking’ is a huge epidemic in the United States. We are appreciative of the gesture made by Apple to address smartphone theft. We reserve judgment on the activation lock feature until we can understand its actual functionality. We look forward to having a substantive conversation with Apple and other manufacturers at our Smartphone Summit on Thursday. We are hopeful that the cellphone industry will imbed persistent technology that is free to consumers that will make a phone inoperable once stolen, even if the device is off, the SIM card is removed, or the phone is modified by a thief to avoid detection.

The wireless carriers last year started a nationwide database that was supposed to blacklist phones reported stolen, preventing them from being reactivated on an American network. But the police say the carrier database has been ineffective. Phone theft has only gone up. In fact, in several metropolitan cities it has reached a record high.

Positive Response to New iPhone Antitheft Feature

Thefts of Apple iPhones have become so widespread that the police have coined the term “Apple picking” to describe the crime. Apple says it has come up with a solution for the problem, and legal officials are already showing thanks to the company.

Apple on Monday said its next mobile operating system, iOS 7, due out in the fall, will include a feature called Activation Lock that should help deter theft. The feature disables the iPhone even if a thief has turned it off or erased the data on the phone. It can be reactivated only after the user logs into it with the right Apple ID and password.

George Gascón, the district attorney of San Francisco, and Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, have been pushing smartphone makers to do more to protect customers. They have arranged a meeting in New York on Thursday with representatives from Apple, Motorola Mobility, Samsung and Microsoft to discuss ways to deal with the issue.

After hearing about Apple’s Activation Lock, Mr. Gascón and Mr. Schneiderman issued this joint statement:

‘Apple Picking’ is a huge epidemic in the United States. We are appreciative of the gesture made by Apple to address smartphone theft. We reserve judgment on the activation lock feature until we can understand its actual functionality. We look forward to having a substantive conversation with Apple and other manufacturers at our Smartphone Summit on Thursday. We are hopeful that the cellphone industry will imbed persistent technology that is free to consumers that will make a phone inoperable once stolen, even if the device is off, the SIM card is removed, or the phone is modified by a thief to avoid detection.

The wireless carriers last year started a nationwide database that was supposed to blacklist phones reported stolen, preventing them from being reactivated on an American network. But the police say the carrier database has been ineffective. Phone theft has only gone up. In fact, in several metropolitan cities it has reached a record high.

Mobile Companies Crave Maps That Live and Breathe With Data

Maps That Live and Breathe With Data

Nir Elias/Reuters

Users can contribute information like road closures to the map app Waze.

SAN FRANCISCO â€" Maybe real estate agents should start selling mobile phones on the side. Why? Because with phones, as with homes, location is everything.

About 50 million people use Waze. Users earn points and badges, and even edit maps.

As mobile phones become all-in-one tools for living, suggesting where to eat and the fastest way to the dentist’s office, the map of where we are becomes a vital piece of data. From Facebook to Foursquare, Twitter to Travelocity, the companies that seek the attention of people on the go rely heavily on location to deliver relevant information, including advertising.

Maps that are dynamic, adapting to current conditions like traffic or the time of day, are the most useful of all.

The importance of such maps to mobile services helps explain why Google is deep in negotiations to buy Waze, a social mapping service used by millions of drivers around the world, for more than $1 billion. Although a final agreement has not yet been struck, people with knowledge of the discussions say that an acquisition could be announced as soon as this week.

“Context is everything â€" where you are, what other people have said about where you are, how to get there, what’s interesting to do when you get there,” said Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at Forrester Research who studies mobile technology.

Google and Waze declined to comment on the possibility of an acquisition of Waze by Google.

Google, of course, is no slouch when it comes to maps. The search giant’s Maps service, painstakingly compiled by the company over many years and augmented by suggestions from tens of thousands of users, is considered the gold standard of mobile maps.

For users of smartphones that run Google’s Android software in particular, maps and directions are smoothly integrated into the address book, calendar and location-sensitive applications like Web searches and dining recommendations. Even for people with other phones, Google Maps still provides the back-end technology for many applications.

“We’re seeing maps become the canvas to everyone’s app,” said Eric Gundersen, chief executive of MapBox, which provides mapping tools to a number of popular apps like Foursquare and Evernote. “The map is alive; the map is responsive.”

But largely missing from Google’s Maps â€" and from those of other players in the field like Microsoft and Apple â€" is the social component. The map is simply presented by the company.

With Waze, the mob is the map, and like a mob, it can be churning with energy. The start-up, which has only a few employees, has generated many of its maps by tracking the movements of its nearly 50 million users via GPS. In any given month, about one-third of them are firing up the app, and as they drive, they can share information about slowdowns, speed traps and road closures, allowing Waze to update suggested routes in real time. The most dedicated fans can also edit the maps directly to improve their accuracy.

“It’s not just crowdsourcing. It’s personal participation,” said Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze’s vice president for platforms and partnerships.

That sense of contributing to the common good is part of Waze’s appeal.

“They created this culture where you can really help others,” said Bret McVey, a graphic designer in Omaha who has contributed about 280,000 changes to Waze’s maps in the year he has been using the app.

Waze rewards such passion with points and badges, and the top 500 or so map editors can get direct access to Waze employees around the clock to deal with problems, like adapting the maps of Oklahoma to show road closures after this spring’s tornadoes.

In Los Angeles, said Ms. Eisnor, about 10 percent of drivers use Waze. In places like Costa Rica and Malaysia, Waze users helped create the first useful navigable maps of the country, she said.

The communal energy of Waze’s users drew the attention of Facebook, which held discussions about acquiring Waze last month. Facebook users can already sign in to Waze with their Facebook identity and share their driving with their friends, and Waze recently added new integration of its maps into Facebook’s Events feature. After the talks ended without a deal, Waze turned its attention to Google.

For Google, analysts and industry executives said, Waze would provide two benefits.

One is that user passion. “This is less about direct revenue that Google can get and really about keeping Google customers in the Google sphere and using Google services,” Mr. Golvin said.

The other is to keep a useful map out of the hands of competitors like Apple, which has struggled with its own map service, and Facebook, which is battling Google to connect its users with their friends.

Jeff Carpenter, of Des Moines, who is a volunteer editor for both Waze and Google Maps, views the second point â€" keeping Waze from others â€" as the main reason that Google would buy its much smaller rival. “I don’t think there’s anything in Waze that Google couldn’t have done over time,” he said.

Google, which also allows users like him to contribute edits, used to take months to integrate the changes. Now the company allows some changes instantaneously, he said, and others are quickly reviewed. Mr. Carpenter said Google’s maps were also better integrated into other applications. Waze must be used independently, which makes it much harder to use.

If Google does buy Waze, however, it needs to be careful to court Waze’s dedicated users. “It’s important for them to roadmap what’s going to happen, for the community,” Mr. Carpenter said. “Without the contributors, they really have nothing.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 11, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Maps That Live and Breathe With Data.