Google-owned navigation platform Waze lays off employees

San Francisco, June 28

Google is reportedly laying off employees from its navigation and mapping company Waze, as it aims to merge mapping products.

The tech giant is moving Waze over to Google's ads system which means there will be job cuts at Waze in "sales, marketing, operations and analytics," reports CNBC.

The report cited an email by Chris Phillips, VP and GM of Google's Geo unit, which read that the company hopes to "create a more scalable and optimised Waze Ads product".

Waze has more than 500 employees and it was not clear how many of those will lose jobs.

"We have decided to transition Waze's ads monetisation to be managed by the Global Business Organisation (GBO), similar to Google Maps," Phillips wrote in the email.

"Unfortunately, this will result in a reduction of Waze Ads monetisation-focused roles in sales, marketing, operations and analytics," the email noted.

Waze was acquired by Google for about $1.1 billion in 2013.

The Waze app, which has around 140 million active users, uses a crowdsourcing technique that allows it to determine the fastest driving route from one location to another, with the most recent traffic information.

In 2020, Waze had laid off 5 per cent of its global workforce, about 30 people, amid the pandemic.

Waze had shut several of its offices in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions as it sought to refocus its business on certain markets.