Google hits Uber, Lyft

Not content to let Uber and Lyft duke it out in the competitive, muddled world of ride-sharing, Google's Waze has launched its own carpool app. The Chocolate Factory's crowdsource traffic and nav app will now allow users in the San Francisco Bay Area to use the app to either schedule a pick-up or find a passenger to ferry. …

[Jan 0]

Is Waze still alive?

Is this just an attempt to re-employ the Waze team? In southern England, outside of London, it doesn't have enough users to make it useful. (I.e it's unaware of road closures and delays nowadays.) I went back to using TomTom when the userbase started shrinking. (I would probably just use Google maps if I hadn't bought TomTom years ago.) Without frequent and timely feedback, Waze is doomed. How's it doing in the rest of the world?

[paulf]

Re: Is Waze still alive?

I'm finding it ok in the less South Easty parts of Blighty - it was useful on a recent trip to the bottom left for example. That said, a big problem I've found is submitting reports just doesn't work if the data connection at that time is less than 3G. Sometimes I can't even open the report incident popup if it feels the data connection isn't adequate so I don't bother reporting stuff as often.

On 2G (i.e. EDGE or GPRS) Waze just complains of no connection to the server in the mother ship and refuses to take details. A sensible approach would be to cache the report and upload it automatically when coverage returned but I guess Waze/Google just assume people only drive where there is an excellent 3G/4G signal on all networks.

Trying to report road closures only works when you're on the specific bit of closed road. Since it's pretty involved to make the report it makes more sense to do it when you next stop rather than at the closure itself.