Internet giant Google is closing in on Waze, an Israeli-based mobile app company that offers a free social GPS application featuring turn-by-turn navigation.
Facebook and Yahoo in its bid to acquire the company, with an all-cash offer, according to Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
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Apple had opened the bidding earlier in the year at $500m, after turning to Waze in the wake of its iPhone 5 maps fiasco. But in recent weeks Facebook and Google have been locked in a bidding war, which Google is poised to win. An announcement is expected as early as Tuesday.
Any sale - whether to Google, Yahoo or any number of other suitors that are reportedly lining up to splash $1bn+ on the company - will represent a tasty profit for the venture capital investors that have pumped some $50m into the company.
In 2010, Waze raised $25m in its second round of funding, while in 2011 it raised an additional $30m in financing. In total, it has scooped up $67m in venture funding since it was founded in 2008.
The business model, though, is hazier. Its plans in 2011 involved selling location-based advertising and expanding into Asia. The sale of location-based advertising was mooted as a key feature of 3G networks, but never took off, partly due to privacy concerns.
Indeed, following the revelations about the US government using its legal muscle over internet companies to spy on the world's internet users.
The deal will enable Google not just to track what people across the world do online, but where they travel 'offline', and add it to the detailed databases it keeps of people's internet activity.
Waze supports Android, iPhone, BlackBerry 7, Windows Phone 8, Java - J2ME (RIM) - and even Windows Mobile and Symbian.
