The acquisition of the Israeli navigation app and traffic report start up will be completed after months of speculation involving Google, Facebook and Apple.
Waze traffic software – Photo IsraelandStuff/PP
Sources inform ”Globes” that Google Inc. will acquire Waze for $1.3 billion. The acquisition of the Israeli navigation app and traffic report start-up will be completed after months of reports that Waze would be sold to either Google or Facebook Inc.
Ra’anana-based Waze has almost 50 million users. This is a big number for an Israeli company, which probably helped it achieve the hoped-for exit.
Internet giant Google took a symbolic step this week, changing the tagline on the homepage of its Palestinian edition from “Palestinian territories” to “Palestine.”
Google’s Palestinian edition homepage
The move marks another victory for the Palestinian Authority, after it won a historic upgrade at the United Nations General Assembly in November, gaining the status of non-member observer state. Following the vote, the PA officially changed its name to the State of Palestine, with stamps, signs and letterheads reflecting the decision.
“We’re changing the name ‘Palestinian Territories’ to ‘Palestine’ across our products,” Google spokesman Nathan Tyler told the BBC on Friday.
The Israel Antiquities Authority and Google Israel launched the Dead Sea Scrolls digital library on Tuesday.
Dead Sea Scrolls digital library.
The library, stored on Google servers, will eventually hold all of the tens of thousands of fragments of the scrolls in very high resolution. For now, some 4,000 scans of infrared photographs taken right after their discovery in the 1950s have been uploaded, as well as 1,000 new scans done in a lab specially constructed for this task by the Antiquities Authority. Continue Reading »
By JTA
Google launched its Campus Tel Aviv, a center for Israeli entrepreneurs and startups.
To celebrate the inauguration of Google’s new offices and campus in Tel Aviv, Israel, PM Netanyahu drew his own Google Doodle.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut a virtual ribbon at the inauguration ceremony on Monday for a campus that occupies a floor of the Electra Tower in Tel Aviv. The 16,000-square-foot space includes an area for meetings and workshop space for startup companies.
Using the campus and participating in its activities are free for entrepreneurs and startups. Continue Reading »
Google and Apple have both removed a Hezbollah application for streaming video from its Al-Manar satellite network from their respective app stores, tech media website CNET reported on Tuesday.
Al-Manar is the broadcasting arm of Hezbollah.
Photo credit: Al-Manar
The Anti-Defamation League wrote to Apple on Friday when it became aware of the app. It was removed from the iTunes store on Sunday. A spokesman for Google told CNET on Tuesday that it had also removed the app from Google Play.
Google is planning to provide 22,000 square feet of its New York City headquarters to the new applied science graduate school of Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Mayor Bloomberg at Google press conference - Reuters
Google CEO Larry Page and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the partnership at a news conference on Monday at the company’s headquarters in the heart of Manhattan’s high-tech zone.
Officials at Google estimated the market value of the space, which will be provided to the joint venture between Cornell and Technion, at between $10 million and $12 million. Continue Reading »
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Israeli New Shekel Exchange Rate