[vxNsr]

It's possible that this is like what they did with motorola, initially it looked like they were trying to have vertical integration similar to apple, but then for other reasons felt compelled to give that up.

In any case this is dissimilar to most google projects because it looks like it's mostly under Waze's control which atm has a lot of autonomy, it's likely being called a google project by the Waze team because of the brand recognition and by reporters because it's more interesting to talk about how google might be putting itself in a precarious legal position (vis-a-vis a conflict of interest), instead of saying Waze created yet another ridesharing app.