Street plan

摘要

A map was once a sheet of paper. The in-formation it could impart-natural features, political boundaries, streets and railway lines-was limited by space and scale. Getting an update meant buying a new one. The modern map is almost a living thing. Its habitat is the personal computer or (increasingly) the smartphone. It can carry layer upon layer of data, from traffic conditions and public-transport routes to reviews of local restaurants and indoor plans of shops, museums and airports. And as the world changes, the map adapts. On the internet such maps are valuable assets-which is why Google has paid just over $1 billion for Waze, a five-year-old Israeli firm. Waze, the creator of a traffic and navigation app for smartphones, was much sought after. Apple was rumoured to have been interested. And before Google swiped it, Facebook, which lacks maps of its own, was said to be close to a deal. Talks reportedly failed because Waze's team did not want to move to California. Announcing the takeover on June nth, Brian McClendon, head of Google's maps business, wrote that Waze's product developers would "remain in Israel and operate separately for now".