It is official news now that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has decided to acquire Waze to enhance and maintain its dominant position with Google Maps. The news was confirmed on the official Google Blog. While financial terms were not disclosed, there is a serious loser here. Nokia Corp, (NYSE: NOK) is on the wrong end of another outside merger.
Source: courtesy of Google Inc.
Waze is an obvious fit for Google Maps as the service sends you real-time traffic updates from friends and other travelers ahead of you on a real-time basis.
Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) acquired NAVTEQ for what said to be $8 billion or so at the time. Before NAVYEQ was acquired by Nokia, the company bought the website and public company called Traffic.com. That is now Traffic Pulse, and it serves approximately 50 U.S. cities.
Nokia likely would be down with a global stock market selling trend today. Still, its stock is down 2.5% at $3.49 in New York ADR trading, against a 52-week range of $1.63 to $4.90. Nokia’s market cap is now just under $13 billion, so its market value was at one point even lower than the purchase price of NAVTEQ was a few years ago.
The Google deal makes sense if it was affordable and adds to Google’s map dominance. Nokia’s new service that the location and commerce services full under is called HERE. The Google-Waze deal might cause HERE to become “used to be HERE” unless Nokia can catch a break.
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