Google’s navigation platform Waze lays off employees

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San Francisco. Google is laying off employees from its navigation and mapping company Waze, as the company aims to merge its mapping products.

As CNBC reports, the tech giant is bringing Waze into Google’s advertising system, which could mean job cuts in sales, marketing, operations and analytics at Waze.

The report cites an email from Chris Phillips, VP and GM of Google’s Jio unit, in which it is written that the company hopes to build a more scalable and optimized Ways Ad product.

Waze has more than 500 employees and it is not clear how many of them will lose their jobs.

“We’ve decided to have Waze’s ad monetization managed by a Global Business Organization (GBO) similar to Google Maps,” Philips wrote in the email.

“Unfortunately, this will result in a reduction in Ways ad monetization-focused roles in sales, marketing, operations and analytics,” the email said.

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

The Waze app, which has approximately 140 million active users, uses a crowdsourcing technology that allows it to determine the fastest driving route from point to point with the latest traffic information.

In 2020, amid the pandemic, Waze laid off 5 percent of its global workforce, or about 30 people.(IANS)

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