Can GPS startup company Waze map the perfect commute?

Worried about getting left behind and losing out on future market share, hardware manufacturers are jockeying for positions. Strategy Analytics forecasts that by 2013 there will be 1 billion LBS units, and LBS-related spending by consumers and advertisers will reach 8 billion. Nokia bought NavTech in 2008, and PND maker TomTom bought TeleAtlas in 2007. Patel predicts that by 2013, more people will use mobile maps than any other location-enabled service.

Meanwhile, the hardware manufacturers are banking on the hope that users will just default to the maps on whichever device they're using. In that case, Waze has a real distribution problem. Still, Waze is free. Will it succeed? "Leveraging your users to build up your business is a model for the future," emphasizes Bonte. "At a certain point, you'll no longer be able to distinguish the company from the customer base-it will be one big company working together to have a service established." So maybe Waze is onto something.

On the other hand, "Once everyone has real-time traffic info, does it actually produce perverse consequences, like ‘overreaction' effects?" asks Tom Vanderbilt, Slate columnist and author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). "For example, everyone thinks highway A is crowded, so they switch to highway B, which thus becomes crowded. Perhaps providing psychological balm is the most useful feature of the real-time devices," muses Vanderbilt. "When I'm stuck on a road, it's good to know for how long and that the road I'm on, however crowded, is still the best option."