Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Google Maps is still clearly the flagship location-based product. It definitely wasn’t a business line. But it definitely was an other/asset buy. And the asset was I think a couple of things in this case which is really interesting. I think we talked about this a little bit with LinkedIn but this was a data asset. Waze generates so much very, very valuable data that would be valuable to lots of people but especially to Google in terms of improving the core maps product, in terms of their driverless car initiatives and everything they’re doing with transportation. You know, having real-time data. And not just passive data being streamed back from the phone like they’re doing with Google Maps but things like where traffic stops are, like user-reported accidents controversially but has always been part of Waze reporting, where police officers are and speed traps and red light cameras and things like that. But also super clearly as we’ve just been talking about with this whole drama leading into the acquisition, this had huge defensive value for Google. They did not want Facebook to have this. Yeah, and even more than the actual asset of the data is they bought this data gathering machine and I think that’s why we haven’t seen them mess with it at all is because it had a great growth trajectory particularly after the Apple Maps debacle, it was growing at 100,000 new users a day. It was insane. That obviously is short-lived, but they recognized that this thing is going to continue to feed us really great data and data about the real world and mapping data is something that is in need of being constantly updated. Waze has invented these great mechanics that people often complain about because they say they’re distracting while they’re driving. But they've really created mechanics that people reliably feed really up to date information in high fidelity. Yeah, both passively and actively.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.