Update: The rumor of Apple's negotiations with Waze to acquire the crowdsourced navigation app has been dispelled since we originally posted this. But we still maintain all our other assertions about this crowdsourcing success story and recommend checking out the video at the bottom of the post.

The technology and business press is abuzz once again with rumors that a big Silicon Valley player might want to buy crowdsourced traffic and navigation app, Waze. This time, the word is that Apple is in talks with the Israel-based startup to acquire it for somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-billion dollars.

This isn't entirely new news, it's been thought for sometime now that Waze has been collaborating with Apple on a maps project.

We've previously reported on word that Facebook might be interested in acquiring Waze, and even more recently I've written about how the much-publicized Apple Maps debacle was a veritable gift for crowdsourced mapping services like Waze. Now it looks as though I may have been even more on target than I initially thought.

Waze's international reach and purported 30 million users certainly makes it attractive to a global device maker suffering some... ahem -- limitations when it comes it its navigation service.

You can read all about Waze and the business implications of the deal in our coverage and in this article from TechCrunch, but once again we're faced with the prospect of an acquisition that could serve as another validation of the power of the crowd.

Watch the archived Google+ Hangout below with Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze for more on the company and how crowdsourcing has improved their product.