Neil Hughes
As Apple looks to expand its Maps effort with public transit information, Google its taking its Waze service in a different direction, debuting a new ride sharing feature that is being tested in Israel.
The new carpooling function in Waze, dubbed RideWith, uses a driver's planned route to work, and suggests other users they might be able to pick up along the way. Details on the pilot program were revealed this week by Reuters.
Waze confirmed that the "small, private beta test" is underway in the "greater Tel Aviv area."
Drivers are limited to two trips per day, and cannot earn a salary from the carpooling service. And passengers will "order" a ride to or from work, and their payment will help cover the cost of gas and wear and tear on the car.
Google acquired Waze for $1 billion in 2013, and some of its functions, including crowd-sourced traffic data, have been integrated with its own Google Maps service. However, Waze also remains its own separate application, available for free on both iOS and Android.
Apple, meanwhile, ditched Google for its own proprietary mapping data starting with iOS 6. This year, with the launch of iOS 9, the company will expand its offering by integrating transit directions for buses, trains, subways and more.
Google Maps, of course, has had public transit directions for years. Apple Maps has a great deal of catching up to do in that respect, as transit directions at the launch of iOS 9 will only be available in a limited number of cities.
Charles Martin
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12 Comments
Where's Taylor Swift this time?
Is there a way to see the "trust worthiness" of a candidate sharer? Security is an issue when getting into a car with strangers... including in Israel.
Not sure why this is related to Apple. It's not something they would ever implement into maps. They'd leave it up to a third party app to create this workflow and then (very unlikely) embed it into maps in like iOS 14.
Wait, carpooling it not about charging someone, if you are carpooling you rotate who is driving and their car. This is actually modern day hitch hiking, you just send out a virtual thumb and someone comes by and picks you up. I miss the days when we use to hitch a ride to places. Considering the people I see driving, I am not sure I would just drive with someone on waze. I know some people will not drive with me since I tend to drive fast as long as others stay out of my way. Also I have driving style of path of least red lights and it tends to be a quicker way to get places. But requires using back roads which some people tend to avoid, they seem to like highways and main roads. I like this concept that Waze has come up with, but it maybe another attempt by google to give away something so Uber can not make money. I wonder how Google plans to advertise to the carpooling person. Apple just needs to improve on Waze so I can stop using a Google owned product.
Not sure why this is related to Apple. It's not something they would ever implement into maps. They'd leave it up to a third party app to create this workflow and then (very unlikely) embed it into maps in like iOS 14.
Do you REALLY think Apple wants to take up the responsibility of managing carpooling under it's brand? Would be a fucking PR nightmare when anything goes wrong- like someone being killed/raped/kidnapped. Even Google is not implementing it under its brand, leaving it to the Waze app as that creates some distance.