Alphabet merges Google Maps and Waze teams without layoffs

New York, Dec. 8 (EFE). Alphabet — the owner of Google — will merge Waze’s teams with the company’s geo organization, which oversees Maps, Earth and Street View products, starting Friday, a restructuring that won’t lead to layoffs due to pressure to improve operations and reduce costs.

As part of this internal shake-up, more than 500 Waze employees will become part of Geo and its CEO, Neha Parikh, will step down after a transition period.

Alphabet plans to keep Waze, which it acquired in 2013 for $1.1 billion, as a standalone service, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company hopes the restructuring will reduce the burden of creating overlayed maps in its Waze and GoogleMaps products.

“Google remains deeply committed to the unique Waze brand, its popular app, and its thriving community of volunteers and users,” a company spokesperson told the newspaper.

Waze, with 151 million monthly users, was largely operating independently of Google Maps after the acquisition, though Google has integrated some popular Waze features into the main product, the Wall Street Journal notes.

The paper states that Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, looked for areas to improve the company’s efficiency after advertising growth slowed this year.

Also last September, Pichai indicated that he wanted Google to be 20% more productive and then warned that the company could consolidate teams working on overlapping products. EFE

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