Tagged: Google

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And Google has announced it is buying Waze, a community-based traffic and navigation app, for a reported price of just over a billion dollars.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports it may change the way we travel.

WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Google hopes its latest acquisition will make your morning commute easier, faster and more social.

While other traffic apps are somewhat passive, Waze tracks mobile devices as they travel, and uses that information to help analyze traffic speeds and flow.

As Google and other large tech companies cope with the aftermath of recent reports that the National Security Agency has had broad access to their users' data, the search giant is asking the U.S. government for permission to publish the number of national security requests it receives, including those made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Tech companies that cooperated with government intelligence-gathering efforts by allowing access to their databases say they did so only reluctantly and that it never involved 'direct access' to servers, according to The New York Times.