Waze Carpool Expands to Serve All of California

And users of the service could begin to see ads.

byAaron Brown|
Waze Carpool Expands to Serve All of California
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After three months in operation, Waze Carpool is growing from its current San Francisco Bay Area limits to the entire state of California starting on June 6th, according to Recode

Previously, the Google-run carpool service was only available in the Bay Area and in Israel. In addition to the rest of the western state scoring access to the service, Waze is also looking to expand to Brazil, according to Zdnet.

In addition, Waze Carpool users reportedly may start to see new ads popping up while using the app. 

Though similar to Uber Pool and Lyft Line, the service isn't exactly meant to fight against the likes of those programs. Instead, it's more of an honest effort to try and encourage carpooling to get more cars off the roads. Drivers who use Carpool are only paid what the app calculates is fair to cover gas, and Waze takes none of that from the driver. As Recode notes, other than these new potential ads, Waze Carpool has no way of funding itself. 

Even though Waze is a Google-owned property, there are no intentions to merge the map app with Alphabet's self-driving car division, Waymo, according to Recode.

“Waze is thinking about the driver experience today, and self-driving cars are not ready for the mainstream, but traffic is here and now,” Waze business development head, Josh Fried, said to Recode.

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