Yahoo! Should Buy Waze

If you haven’t checked out the TMCnet feature by Josh Alexander about waze1.PNGcompanies Yahoo! should purchase, please do… I’ll wait. Ok – now that you’re back – isn’t this guy funny? It isn’t too often I read an article about tech where I learn things and also laugh out loud.

Thankfully the piece reminded me to write something I have been thinking for a while. Yahoo! should buy Waze. Yes, the mobile, social company is rumored to be in discussions on-and-off with Google and Facebook but Yahoo makes more sense to me as the best suitor because the world’s first web directory needs to be strong in mobile and social.

If you haven’t tried Waze, please take a moment to download it… Again, I’ll wait. This app is easy to use and is infectious in nature. It’s successfully warned me of a number of road hazards ahead of time and saved me from tons of traffic. Moreover, it is smart… It knows where I am going and routes me there without me asking. It’s an app with intelligence. Other developers can learn from their examples.

It is easy to see how this app can be extended to provide relevant information when you are walking around city streets or in a mall. For waze2.PNGexample, I can envision a popup from another Wazer telling me about the shoes they just bought on sale or the special two-for-one offer at the corner coffee shop.

The point is, Waze is an amazing app and gives Yahoo exactly what they need. If Google were to purchase the company, it would further cement their position in mobile and location based services. Facebook would gain from a Waze buy as it would have a strong GPS play but the social networks are obviously redundant. Then again, Instagram is redundant as well and that turned out to be a good decision by Zuckerberg.

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