Google-owned, community-based traffic and navigation app Waze is branching out into carpooling in the United States and has launched a test service in the Bay Area.

The initial service will connect employees at select companies via a new app, Waze Rider, and will let them request a ride from other Waze users who share a similar commute, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Test users are able to use the app to look for the closest driver already planning to drive a specific route, then send a carpooling request; drivers receive ride requests and then are given the option to accept or decline the offer.

Riders pay Waze carpool drivers a suggested amount, based on the standard rate set by the Internal Revenue Service, 54 cents per mile, and Waze does not take a percentage of the transaction.

The testing pool includes 25,000 employees from Google itself, along with UCSF, Adobe, and Walmart Global, all companies located close to Google’s Mountain View headquarters.

Carpooling isn’t completely new to Waze, with the company already testing a similar service in the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Ra’anana, and Herzliya.

Uber competitor

While better known for its taxi-like “ridesharing” service, Uber, Inc. also operates a carpooling service called UberPool, as does its main competitor Lyft, Inc.

When the Israeli test program was rolled out, Google stated that the service was “an experiment in the Tel Aviv area that doesn’t compete with Uber: it’s a platform built to enable local drivers to help each other during busy commute hours,” and the same may hold true for its new Bay Area trial, at least for now.

While the big game in town is ultimately ridesharing, carpooling is still a rapidly growing market in its own right, with Uber claiming that in Los Angeles alone it is now facilitating millions of trips, and its carpooling service now accounts for 25 percent of all rides it facilitates in the city.

It may well be that Google, through Waze, is simply testing carpooling service now, but if the trial is successful there is absolutely no reason as to why Google wouldn’t expand it and take on Uber and Lyft directly. After all, there is serious money to be made.

Image credit: Grumini/ YouTube/CC by 2.0