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Google to buy social traffic app Waze for reported $1 billion

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 10 (UPI) -- Google is set to buy the Israeli start-up behind the social traffic app Waze for more than $1 billion, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported.

The two companies agreed in principle to most terms, including a price tag for the navigation app exceeding $1 billion in cash, Haaretz said Sunday.

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Waze would retain its independent identity both as a company and as a brand, the companies announced, and both the Waze development center and company head Noam Bardin would remain in Israel for at least three years.

The deal with Google comes after talks between the Israeli company and Facebook collapsed. Facebook had sought to bring the company's operations into its California headquarters and re-brand Waze as a Facebook product, something the Israeli company had resisted.

Waze is a crowd-sourced, mobile-oriented navigation app that uses satellite signals to gather information from its 47 million members to generate maps and traffic data.

Waze is owned by a group of Israeli and foreign investors, who together put $67 million into the company since it was founded in 2008.

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