UPDATE: Google Maps with Waze reporting now available in Malaysia. Screenshot after the break.
Google has acquired Waze a couple of months back and now Google Maps is starting to reap the fruits of their purchase. To improve its navigation particularly traffic info, Google is now pulling user generated traffic reports from Waze into Maps. This offers real time reporting and suggests alternative routes effectively based on what’s actually reported on the ground.
During its introduction recently, the feature is made available in selected countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, UK and the US. Today Google is rolling out to 46 more countries but without mentioning them. Hopefully Malaysia is part of the list since there’s an active community especially around the Klang Valley. There’s no app updates necessary and the new traffic alerts powered by Waze will be displayed on the current version of Google Maps both Android and iOS.
At the moment we won’t see Google killing off Waze anytime soon as Google Maps still relies on user submission through Waze. Perhaps one day Google might merge both apps once they allow users to report traffic, accident and road hazard alerts on Google Maps.
