3:30
Juan MC Larrosa
How Google dodged anti-trust law to buy Waze
By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz
Is this social map a Google competitor? AP Photo/Virginia Mayo
When Google, king of the mobile maps, shelled out $1 billion to buy Israeli social mapping company Waze, the first question for many was: Where’s the anti-trust ruling?
After all, Google is a leading digital maps provider, and Waze was one of the few innovators actually catching up with fellow digital cartographers Nokia, Apple and Microsoft. An American consumer watchdog wrote (pdf) to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) noting that the acquisition would “remove the most viable competitor to Google Maps in the mobile space.” The watchdog quoted the company’s...
