Google Extends Reach Of Waze Carpool Feature Throughout California

Google’s navigation app service Waze has been trying out a carpooling service in San Francisco for some time now, which basically allows passengers to share a ride together. The company recently made the announcement that the feature is set to become available through the state of California. Despite the presence and similar services offered by other cab-hailing firms, it seems the Waze Carpooling business is rapidly growing.

The rollout for the service is going to be slow at first but starting June 6th, passengers from all over California can start looking forward to using the Waze Carpool app, Reuters reports. This really isn’t surprising since the market for ride-sharing is growing, attracting the attention of even giant car companies like GM and Ford. As head of Waze Carpool Josh Fried pointed out, it was also essential to develop the service further.

"Carpooling takes density and doing it on a limited capacity, you can only learn so much," Fried said. "We wanted to expand to a Waze hub. It's our first attempt to see if we can go big into a region."

There is also the matter of going to where the users are to consider. After all, Los Angeles is where the most density in Waze usage can be found. It’s only common sense that the company would want to bring its carpooling service to one of the most traffic jam-ridden cities in the country.

Aside from expanding the range of the service, it seems Waze is also considering putting ads on the ride-sharing feature, Recode reports. This is a bid for the feature to finally start making money since all of the revenue from the fare all go to the Waze driver. The company could start collecting commission in order to supplement operating costs, but ads would make a lot more sense.