In ten years of existence, the Waze It quickly scaled the walls of digital maps to become one of the world's most popular options in the industry. Its biggest differential, the collaborative aspect of the platform, was the main reason that drove Google to pull its wallet and shell out nearly $ 1 billion for the service in 2013.
Even with this jackpot and the miraculous fact that we're talking about a service that Google bought and left alive, however, the biggest gratitude there at Waze headquarters is not to the Mountain View giant but to one of its top competitors. : a Apple.
In interview with Business Insider Australia, the CEO of the platform, Noam Bardim, spared no words in referring to Apple as being most responsible for Waze's success, adding that eternally grateful company is especially Tim Cook who has his own "Tribute Day" held annually there at the service headquarters.
Noam BardimThe funniest part of the story is that Bardim's gratitude comes from one of the most embarrassing moments in Apple's recent history: the disastrous launch of its own map platform in 2012. To those who don't remember very well, Apple's (launched) service on iOS 6 in place of the native Google Maps app, at a time when Apple was looking to get off Google in every way possible) was badly received at its debut, with evenly unfavorable criticism of the Google service it was trying replace.
The joke was so great that Apple was forced to issue a public apology. In the letter, Tim Cook took the lead in recommending competing services to Ma, such as Bing Maps, MapQuest and yes, Waze himself. From then on, things exploded, according to Bardim:
That was the moment we burst. From then on, things started to take off, eventually reaching acquisition (by Google) in 2013.
The Tim Cook Day celebrated there at Waze headquarters, celebrated every year on September 28th, exactly when the CEO of Apple published the open letter explicitly recommending service to its users.
In the interview, Bardim spoke of other aspects of Waze's history, such as the fact that, at the beginning of its development, the idea would be to create a service focused specifically on the BlackBerry platform, which is then one of the world's leading smartphone makers. Halfway through, it was decided that the focus would be converted to iOS, which probably It was the best choice.
Despite the infinite gratitude Apple and Cook, Bardim also shared a very important tip praising the Waze buyer:
If you sell your company, sell it to Google. Seriously.
Well, if he's saying
via iPhone Hacks
