Waze getting into the ride-sharing market shouldn’t be that surprising if you think about how popular the idea is to companies and how appealing the idea is to commuters.
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They way it would work is.
Google will take a cut of the fee paid, with the percentage still to be determined. Not only that, but the pilot will limit the drivers to two journeys a day in which they can pick up passengers: one in the morning on the way to work, and another in the evening home again. In 2007, Nokia bought Chicago-based Navteq for $8.1 billion. The company has experimented a lot with the mapping system. It’s no secret that the search giant has had a stake in this area for years, especially considering its long-in-development driverless auto project. In this sense, drivers essentially replace cartographers. But the Google-owned online mapping company Waze may have a solution to that problem, and it comes in the form of a new carpooling app. Potential passengers who seek a ride will use a separate app called RideWith.
According to Waze, it may be hard to find drivers to catch a ride with at first.
Also unclear is how the app would work in real time. “The driver can then accept or decline the ride and rate”. Waze, which is available on a range of platforms, including Apple’s iOS, is at its heart a navigation app, allowing users to input a destination and get directions. This was done for an obvious reason, the Waze app had some pretty incredible and useful navigation features.
The pilot will focus only on commuters, so that Google doesn’t clash with regulators and taxi services, they way Uber has.
Think ride-sharing was just an Uber game?
Waze is cautiously optimistic about the startup’s long-term success, but does not expect enough drivers to meet initial demand. And instead of paying with cash, passengers pay with tokens, which are credited to drivers’ accounts. “With La’zooz, the communication, computation, matching, and money transfer is all done on a user’s device”, said Zluf.
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Waze said it was conducting a private, small beta test in the area of greater Tel Aviv for carpooling, but nothing further will be released about this test yet. We ourselves use them all the time.
