What I don't realize is how Waze, owned by Google, has more
roads (like 50% more, easily) and has house numbers compared to google maps, which has no house numbers and barely any roads, here in Lithuania.
Interesting, in Estonia it is quite the opposite. Waze is almost always better at routing than google maps. Just this summer I had a car trip to one of our islands where google maps directed me down a road that got increasingly worse. We almost reached the coast but got stuck 50m before the campsite when the road turned to sand.
They need to integrate more. Google Maps is too conservative with its routing, it tends to stick to highways if at all possible. Waze is far more aggressive, it uses surface roads and side streets to get you out of traffic and to your destination faster, usually 10-15 minutes faster than Google Maps does on my commute home.
Waze has been consistently better, especially for traffic rerouting. It's also way better at letting you know about road events, like accidents, than Google Maps. Maps is better to search stuff on a map, but for navigation, it is so barebones (and not even in a good minimalist way).
I'm not sure how GMaps can still lag so far behind when Waze is also owned by Google.
I see people mention Waze frequently as a competitor or alternative to Google Maps. It's useful to remind people that Google also owns Waze, so it's really just another Google product.
Google Maps has more efficient driving routes. I've been using Waze for years, but recently switched back to Google Maps for this reason after I noticed Waze taking me a much further route to save about ten minutes but use a lot more fuel.
I’ve found Waze to do the opposite, which suits me. It’ll often show me new routes when the obvious ones are slow.
It seemed to be more aggressive than Google Maps. I thought that was interesting since they’re both Google. Different engine? Different default options? User intuition wrong?
I learnt about Waze many years ago from non technical folks. Drivers have niche communities of their own too, where stuff like this gets disseminated.
“Waze is better than google maps for directions” for a long time was true. Then google bought it.
If Waze can rise up, so can another. Especially where it’ll save drivers some % on their fuel bills. Even more so in European countries with high fuel duties.
First of all, Waze was an acquisition and the users/following of Waze is very different from Google Maps. It's a niche product to be honest. Google Maps already absorbs the most valuable information from Waze. I believe that's how they show accidents and road closures.
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