Google combines Maps and Waze groups as pressures mount to chop prices

Google plans to mix the groups engaged on its Maps product and on Waze, a mapping service that Google acquired in 2013. The merger comes because the search engine big feels the strain to chop prices and consolidate operations, experiences The Wall Street Journal.

Waze’s crew of 500 workers will fall beneath Google’s Geo group, which oversees Maps, Earth and Street View, beginning Friday. Neha Parikh, Waze’s present CEO, will go away her function.

Google informed WSJ it plans to maintain Waze as a standalone service — Waze is thought for its crowd-sourcing of en route data like places of velocity cameras, cop vehicles and roadkill.

Google additionally mentioned it didn’t anticipate any layoffs as a part of the reorganization. However, layoffs abound within the tech world, whether or not you’re a startup or an Amazon. And they typically hit the toughest the place there are redundancies between groups. Indeed, Google mentioned it expects the restructuring of the totally different mapping providers to cut back overlap in mapmaking.