But Google traditionally is operating internal teams as competing teams. So Waze has a great chance of being seen as a “competing” product to Google maps. A customer sent to Waze might be seen as a customer lost to Waze. For example Waze added first the integration with Spotify in 2017, never supported Google play music and only after years it supported YouTube music. If they felt that they were under the same company (they were acquired five years earlier), they should have been integrated Google play music first, Spotify second (or both, GPM was killed three years later).

Regarding the community, i saw a lot of mods doing a lot of unpaid work. And i mean A LOT, they are investing hours of their free time to improve maps for a multi billion corporation. But when I tried to login, i had the impression that it was abandoned since the acquisition. The interface design is very outdated and it’s very hard for a regular user to find this place as it’s not advertised anywhere (i got the link when I sent a correction to the map from the app)

And corrections appear to be unidirectional. Something that gets fixed or flagged in Google maps doesn’t transfer to Waze, but the opposite happens.

Again on Android auto, Waze got split screen support 6 months after it was publicly announced and one year after it was available in the public beta channel on the play store. No communication between the two teams in the same company, the android auto team treated the Waze team as they were some independent company

Seeing Google history, i give 3 years max before they wind down Waze.

Enshitawaze