Google is set to acquire the Israeli navigation app and traffic report start-up Waze for a whopping $1.3 billion, Globes reported Sunday.

It had recently been reported that a deal with Facebook fell through because, among other reasons, Waze employees were unwilling to relocate to the social media giant’s headquarters in California.

There had also been reports that Apple Inc. was interested in acquiring Waze, but Apple CEO Tim Cook shot down those rumors in an interview with “AllThingsD” at the D11 conference in late May.

Globes writes: “Waze has developed one of the most popular navigation apps on the market. It offers apps for smartphones, tablets, and vehicle systems for navigating roads in Israel and in other countries. The information is about traffic congestion, police presence, road accidents, speed cameras, and road hazards collected by crowdsourcing from Waze’s social network.”

According to Globes,  CTO Ehud Shabtai will earn $78 million, president Uri Levine will earn $38 million, VP R&D Amir Shinar and his brother Gili will earn $65 million from the deal.

Neither Waze nor Google were willing to offer a comment to Globes on the report.

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Source: The Algemeiner

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