Google's Waze acquisition should not need an antitrust probe, according to the chairman of research and analysis firm TechMarketView, Richard Holway.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) had been urged to block Google's $1.3bn (£830m) acquisition of Israel-based mobile app company Waze by pressure group Consumer Watchdog on "antitrust grounds" because it would "remove the most viable competitor to Google Maps in the mobile space".
In a letter to the DoJ, John Simpson, privacy project director at Consumer Watchdog, said that the acquisition would enable Google to access more data about online activity in a way that would increase its dominant position on the internet.
Simpson cited Waze CEO Noam Bardin's comment at last May's AllThingsD conference, in which he said: "What search is for the web, maps are for mobile... We feel that we're the only reasonable competition to [Google] in this market of creating maps that are really geared for mobile, for real-time, for consumers – for the new world that we're moving into".
TechMarketView's Holway said he was extremely surprised by the Consumer Watchdog's letter, stating that Waze was still a relatively small start-up organisation.
"It is not as if they are a huge presence in any of the mapping or other location-based services – it comes as a surprise that anyone should believe that it would create some kind of monopoly," he said.
"On a lot of occasions I can completely understand why people have [competition] concerns, but this is very difficult to get my head around."
Holway went on to say that the Waze acquisition was very well targeted by Google, as location-based advertising will be a major revenue stream for technology and telecoms giants in the coming years.
"Apple was considering acquiring Waze, and it might have avoided some of the problems it had with Apple maps. It just goes to show how valuable these location-based services are," he said.
