Google Maps app showing incident reports from Waze

Abner Li | Nov 30 2024 - 4:59 pm PT

As part of the redesigned incident reporting across all platforms, Google said Maps would show Waze reports for users to confirm while navigating. This is beginning to roll out.

When Google Maps announced — in late July, with the actual rollout taking place mid-September — the improved reporting UI for Android, iOS, Android Auto, CarPlay, and Android Automotive, the company also said “these reports come from the Maps and Waze communities, and you can even see which app a report came from.”

Waze further detailed how “Google Maps will surface reports from our drivers with attribution to Waze directly in the app,” starting with police alerts. In the future, “more data types will be shared and attributed to Waze.”

We’re excited for more drivers to see reports coming from Waze. This wouldn’t be possible without our partnership with Geo, where we aim to bring the most comprehensive map data to all drivers through bi-directional data exchange (like KoiFish)…

We saw the first case of this being live over the past day. In the Google Maps mobile app, one user was prompted with a bottom sheet that noted “Police reported ahead.” There is “From Waze drivers” attribution, and a “Are they still there?” question with large “Yes” or “No” buttons. This panel disappears automatically after a countdown.

Credit: u/Truckin_18

Sharing incident reporting between the two services ultimately makes both apps richer. Google Maps is larger, with the app surpassing 2 billion monthly active users as of late October. For comparison, a report in late 2022 said Waze has 151 million. Internally, both apps are managed by the same Google “Geo” team.

Waze is much more focused on crowdsourced mapping conditions, while Google Maps is more general purpose. In October, Waze started testing a “Conversational Reporting” capability.