In January it was Apple (rumors that TechCrunch bunked one day and debunked the next).

A week ago it was Facebook

Today it’s Google.

Would one of you guys just buy Waze and get it over with?  Here I am on Bloomberg West talking about the acquisition rumors that continue to float around about someone buying Waze at the currently hot acquisition price (pinkie to mouth here)… ONE BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

I really have no idea if this is happening or if its all a big hype-fest.  The personal messages I get from industry folk run heavily in favor of the hype scenario, but that could be jealously. But the thing I think is an interesting question is “If they were going to be bought, what would they be bought for?”.  I think the answer is different for Apple and for Facebook and for Google.  And I personally don’t think that the much touted 47M users is really the answer.

I like the idea I try to lay out here for Google:  What if Google adds it to their navigation as a crowd sourced traffic app?  They could use Google Plus as the social network with “traffic” as a Circle where you don’t care who it is, only if they’re driving on your road.  It gets more people to sign in to Google Plus (which Google REALLY seems to want) and exploded the number of active users.  I kinda like the idea.

Worth $1B? I’m not sure. But I think it does answer the question of why Google, with all the map stuff they have, would want to buy Waze.

What do you think?