Google wants to know where you’re driving

The following is an excerpt from a Marketplace article that quotes Management Professor Brian Proffitt about Google purchasing Waze. To read the entire article visit:Google wants to know where you’re driving

Google is reportedly acquiring the navigation company Waze for more than a billion dollars. The acquisition will further swell the pile of personal data Google collects and uses to serve ads. It also keeps the technology and talent of a hot company out of the hands of competitors in the increasingly important field of mapping.

Waze is a bit like a friend who warns you to skip a certain road because traffic’s a nightmare there today. More than just giving directions, Waze uses data from its more than 40 million app users to calculate the fastest routes. That’s a lot of data, and Google is happy to slurp it up so it can serve us more ads, further customized with our location and travel information.

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“Google didn’t want Apple to have a hold of this,” says tech analyst Brian Proffitt, who teaches at Notre Dame’s business school.

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