Uber and Lyft have something else, apart from each other, to look out for in terms of potential foes. Google's own crowdsourced navigation app, Waze, has now announced plans to expand beyond its current ride-sharing service testbeds, moving outward from San Francisco and Israel to other U.S. cities and Latin America over the next several months.
Waze Might Take On Uber And Lyft As It Expands
The move would significantly impact Waze's carpool prospects, which at present is progressing at a comparatively slower rate than Uber's uberPool service, in addition to Lyft's Line. But that's understandable. Waze is slightly different than the latter two.
How Is Waze Different From Uber And Lyft?
The primary difference with Waze's ride-sharing shtick is that it employs a genuine form of carpooling, in which car owners pick up passengers heading to the same direction for a relatively low cost, at least compared with Uber and Lyft's ride-sharing services.
It's essentially a different concept, as noted by CNET: Uber and Lyft's carpool services involve hiring a driver, with profit as the foremost goal, while Waze only takes into account if there are passengers in waiting who may need a ride.
However simple and easy this might sound, Waze says that it's still a challenge.
"Can we get the average person on his way to work to pick someone up and drop them off once in a while? That's the biggest challenge," Noah Bardim, Waze's CEO, told the Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, carpooling passengers presently pay 54 cents per mile as reimbursement to the driver. Waze could start laying down a 15 percent fee on top of it in the future, Bardim says, which renders Waze closer to a profit-generating enterprise than a solely utilitarian ride-sharing platform.
Of course, there's a more pressing problem beyond talks of profit, and it involves how comfortable and lax drivers are in letting strangers — essentially — into their private cars to share a ride.
Google had been testing Waze carpooling services in San Francisco and Israel, where Waze was founded. Waze is among the most popular navigational platforms available, employing a crowdsourced approach by letting users report traffic information along their individual routes. Google picked up Waze in 2013 for $1 billion.
If Waze's carpooling services take off at a larger scale, it's easy to see how more attractive it could be than Uber's or Lyft's carpooling services: it'll be largely focused on finding passengers their respective rides, instead of aggressively trying to find ways for the company to bank on the whole ecosystem, as noted by TechCrunch.
Some Waze Caveats To Consider
Of course, even with that system in place, there are still a few disadvantages. There is lesser guarantee that passengers would ever find a ride, and because Waze is simply a connecting service, it doesn't uphold screening measures for drivers, which could possibly dampen safety concerns associated with ride-sharing services.
Specific prospective locations are still undisclosed, although Bardim is eyeing São Paulo, Brazil as one target. Other specific markets, however, remain nebulous.
Have you tried ride-sharing with a Waze driver lately? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
