WHAT ARE THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF GOOGLE ACQUIRING WAZE? (QUORA)
January 12, 2020
Answer by Nat Burgess:
For Google to drive their ad network down to the local level, delivering geo-targeted ads, offers, and assistance in real-time, they need the majority of Android users to “ALLOW” location to be enabled on their devices. If consumers think too hard about the implications of this choice (giving up a comprehensive, permanent record of everywhere they have been, how they got there, and someday, what they were doing), they will opt out. A service like Waze swings the pendulum in the other direction by creating a clear incentive to share location – namely, to become part of a virtuous data cloud wherein everyone mutually benefits from sharing location data.