The 12 Most Expensive Acquisitions Made by Google

5. Waze

Price – $1.1 billion

Founded in 2006, Waze was originally a community project in Israel, offering a free digital database of the country’s map. Two years later it had changed its name to Waze from “FreeMap Israel”.

In the years to come it managed to attract more and more users before expanding globally. The idea that people could help each other to signal potholes, police and traffic jams was a hit among many drivers around the world and helped capture Google’s attention. The “Waze left” became shorthand for a somewhat reckless left turn encouraged by Waze’s less traditional directions.

In June 2013, Google announced the acquisition of Waze, beating Facebook to the punch. Since then, its tools were integrated with Google Maps and Google Maps data was introduced in Waze, intertwining the two in such a way that increases the usefulness of both tools in unique ways.