Google’s Waze to start carpooling pilot programme in Israel

“With deep local traffic insight and a large, passionate community, Waze has developed RideWith to serve Israeli commuters at their greatest time of need: rush hour”. “Waze regularly experiments with new ideas in our backyard”.

Waze, Google-owned mapping company, is testing a ride-sharing initiative that will help users share rides with fellow commuters going in the same direction.

Google acquired Waze in 2013 for almost billion.

Taxi drivers’ frustration and anger against Uber for its perceived unfair competition, due to lower prices, has led to the company cancelling its UberPOP service in France after tense protests in Paris last month. Passengers will pay drivers a small fee for the ride. Waze says this is good for neighbors who have similar commutes or co-workers who live near each other. People are used to that, but our app enables ride-sharing without gathering the information about a trip or a driver on a central server. This is a hard limit – drivers can give no more than two rides per day.

With RideWith, users can now find neighbors and coworkers who might be willing to offer a lift for longer daily distances. Unlike Uber, RideWith is more of a car-pooling or hitchhiking service instead of taxiing.

All of which points to a potential face-off between Uber and Google, with both companies looking to bulk up their services while making incremental moves that don’t appear to directly provoke the other. Uber has argued against such claims, but has been forced to suspend its services in some cities.

“Depending on the demand that is created and the success of the pilot, Google will gradually expand the service elsewhere in Israel”. Waze will also receive a commission on the collected fare, which will be paid directly through the app with a credit card.

Google’s service will reportedly be rolled out to other cities with modifications based on data gathered in the Israeli pilot program.

A Google representative was not immediately available for comment.

Waze said in response, “We are setting up a small pilot in the Gush Dan area based on the carpooling concept”.