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Facebook in £650m deal to buy Israeli sat-nav start-up

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By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

May 11, 2013 | 1 min read

Facebook is reportedly close to $1bn (£650m) deal to purchase Waze, an Isreali sat-nav company which uses satellite signals from members’ smartphones to generate maps and traffic data, which it then shares with other users, offering real-time traffic information.

If successful, the deal could see Facebook compete with similar mapping systems from Apple and Google.

Talks between Facebook and the start-up, which has 47 million users, reportedly began six months ago, however rumours have also circulated that Apple is also interested in acquiring it.

A ZDNet source has been quoted as saying: “You could term the interaction between Waze and Apple as a series of ‘dates,’ whereas this [Facebook interaction] seems more like an ‘engagement.’ The deal makes a lot of sense for Facebook, and of course Waze would be getting a lot more money.”

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