> If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave?

You don't have much experience with corporate acquisitions, do you?

The Acquiree CEO always leaves after a year or three, unless Acquirer is a company like Cisco that's really good at it. Why?

Because Acquirer has middle manager drones, who continually complain about the how Acquiree is not "aligning with our strategy." Eventually, Acquiree's CEO gets sick of it and quits.

But you're right - they won't maintain it as a separate app. Because those drones can wear anyone out.

To be clear I was talking about the departing CEO of Waze, Neha Parikh. Not the founder that left a while ago.

Also I’m very familiar with acquisitions particularly at Google.

I know very little of this, but why would they want to continue with multiple map products?

They won't. I was in Google Maps. They bought Zagat -- remember them? They had the best restaurant reviews in the U.S. pre-Internet. How much have you heard of them lately

Zagat was a loss. But it was also basically a creature of a different era when foodies filled out paper surveys and the results were a pretty decent guide for other foodies. Once it was opened up to the plebes, the results got increasingly bad for that audience as everything got more and more algorithmic. (And, yes, it sort of hung on for a while but it deteriorated more and more.)

Not sure what Google ultimately got out of Zagat rather than maybe a bit of kickstart for restaurant ratings.

It was Marissa Mayer who made that deal. I distinctly remember her saying the goal was an editorially written review for every business on the planet.

Tim Zagat invited us all to visit him if we were in MYC, to get a good restaurant recommendation (and reservation? I'm not sure if he said that).

My dad, who was an executive at a large non-tech company, used to get restaurant recommendations by calling the restaurant critic at the city's newspaper. Different times in a much less scalable world.

>If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave?

... I'm not arguing whether or not they intended to keep the apps separate? If you want to know why he left, he's already told you[1].

>Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.

Sure. Agreed. That's not what this comment chain was discussing, though. You sure you responded to the right post?

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...

>If you want to know why he left, he's already told you[1].

The article clearly states that SHE left with no explanation why:

Waze CEO Neha Parikh will exit her role following a transition period

You're referencing an article that is over a year old about a completely different person.

I mistakenly thought that that individual was referring to the founder's departure, not the CEO's termination post-restructuring. That's my bad.

The Waze founder left a while ago.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...