Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#411

Post by coldpie » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #82

> Unlike Uber and its crosstown rival Lyft Inc., both of which largely operate as on-demand taxi businesses, Waze wants to connect riders with drivers who are already headed in the same direction. Funny because that is Lyft's (né Zimride) original model. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

> Funny because that is Lyft's (né Zimride)

Holy crow, I've always seen it spelled née, and sure enough, it's because it's almost always used when referring to a woman's name before marriage. Turns out né exists for men! Are companies masculine, then?

(Gendered languages belong in the dumpster of history.)

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#412

Post by michaelcampbell » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #320

michaelcampbell wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waze Carpool is fantastic... for the 0.26% of the US that lives in the Bay area.

Isn't this just a starter?

Sure, but it's being used as an example of something that exists, which for the vast, vast majority of the US, doesn't.

My mistake here was forgetting the echo chamber that is HN. There is a world outside SV, but it doesn't really matter.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#413

Post by wpietri » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #272

This is not about taking on Uber. Google is testing AI for self driving cars. Once we have self driving cars, the idea is that you deploy these cars and the cars figure out who to pick up and who to drop off and possible doing group pick ups along the way. Waze is going to predict who to pick up based on their collected data thus far using ML, their data scientists are going to supervise it and correct it. Once we ha…

You don't think that's exactly the market Uber has been going for? There's a reason Uber raided CMU for researchers:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carne...

And that reason became pretty obvious when they started testing self-driving cars recently in Pittsburgh:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-i...

I don't think Uber started out with this plan, but clearly at some point they realized that they had to be a two-stage company like Netflix. Google's doing the same thing, but with a different stage 1.

My bet, though, is that Uber wants to own the market, while Google is going to go after a platform play. I expect it to be sort of like Android. Google will make the software and own important parts of the consumer relationship. But most people who can manufacture cars or otherwise acquire large fleets at low costs will not want to do the software work, so they'll partner with Google.

So yes, in the same way that Android was about taking on Apple in a way that makes decent money and keep Google from getting cut out of an important piece of the tech/human intersection, this is ultimately about taking on Uber.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#414

Post by icebraining » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #403

icebraining wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - so any tip just reduces how much the owner has to pay to cover minimum wage, making it a subsidy to them, not to the server, who gets minimum wage either way.

It's not really a subsidy though, it's just a complication of the payment. It could be a subsidy if it wasn't an established custom to tip, but people know quite well that they are paying the server a tip for the service. I suppose the fact that it enables the restaurant to under-report wages and thus under-pay wage taxes is a bit of a subsidy (but then some of that savings probably shows up for the customer).

It is a subsidy, because the server gets the same, it's the restaurant that pockets the difference.

Say the server works 40h/week like a regular full-time worker, so the minimum take-home pay under federal law is $15000. If the server gets $0 in tips, the restaurant must pay the $15000. But if the server gets, say, $5000 in tips, the restaurant can pay only $10000.

The server gets the same money, only the restaurant gets to save some.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#415

Post by rootusrootus » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

imaginenore wrote: post #233

LordHumungous wrote: post #163

I was actually just thinking about this the other day- why doesn't a large tech company with lots of cash create a ride service which basically lets the driver keep everything? Uber can't possibly compete. Google can destroy them before they can become a threat in other tech spaces.

Network effect + first mover advantage. It takes a lot of time and money to develop the community if there already are major players. In this particular case Google would have so spend a shit ton of money on advertising, and it's not guaranteed to work. They failed with Google+.

I feel like Google failed with Google+ not simply due to being late to the market, but because Google+ was a big paradigm shift from Facebook style social media and it didn't catch on with users. If they had gone with a more conventional solution I think they could have taken a rather large chunk out of Facebook's user base.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#416

Post by Grue3 » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

luka-birsa wrote: post #357

Love it how Uber is getting Ubered by providing a service they were supposedly providing but it was only a marketing scam to get around Taxi regulation. This is proper "sharing economy" where the other party isn't doing this to make a living out of it. I wonder who will Airbnb the Airbnb and is that at all possible. The end will be the same anyways - both companies are competing for a spot on the customers mobile pho…

>I wonder who will Airbnb the Airbnb and is that at all possible.

I think it's called "couchsurfing".

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#417

Post by Throwaway585250 » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:19 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #363

Throwaway585250 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is showing too, along with an unhealthy dose of smugness. GP literally chose to be homeless instead of licking the boots of the wealthy for table scraps, which is a degree of courage above and beyond what could have been expected of him, but it was still courage. Saying that his ability to do this is privileged, is like claiming a man who saves a baby from a burning house is showing his able privilege: true, te…

I had to resist the urge to break into uncontrollable laughter when you compared living in your car to saving a baby from a burning building. Since this is a throwaway I strongly suspect you are your own cheerleader. Let me see if I can take you down a peg. A man who chooses to live in his own car instead of taking a servile job is presumably still in need of food to sustain him. You are basically glorifying living o…

It's a ridiculous comparison, given in response to the ridiculous assertion that homelessness is a privilege.

At the end of the day, at some point someone says "these working conditions are too shitty and I'd rather go look for something else". That person sets a lower bound on working conditions for people who aren't able to leave so easily. Saying "how dare you not work for a pittance with all the other poor buggers trapped on a wage where saving is impossible" is blind; calling it privilege is wilful stupidity.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#418

Post by zhte415 » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #365

luka-birsa wrote: post #357

Love it how Uber is getting Ubered by providing a service they were supposedly providing but it was only a marketing scam to get around Taxi regulation. This is proper "sharing economy" where the other party isn't doing this to make a living out of it. I wonder who will Airbnb the Airbnb and is that at all possible. The end will be the same anyways - both companies are competing for a spot on the customers mobile pho…

I do not like the fragmentation though. I want one app to work everywhere. Uber in China is broken already and no way I could use Didi app. Also, I do not think that there is any significant network or engineering value in the app itself. If Google or Tesla finally starts delivering self-driving car service for 10x less than Uber, users will flee in a jiffy.

Didi is very easy. Just type the location, and a cab will turn up within 1-2 minutes.

Given cab drivers make a pittance after the cost of the LPG and insurance, little disruption in the industry other than to share a ride home with a stranger that possibly works in a similar industry and/or similar locations, and smalltalk happens.

Current China eliminating blue collar jobs after they've already been decimated by modernisation over the past 3 decades is pretty unlikely.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#419

Post by ancap » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #167

ancap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Living wage"? Are you suggesting that uber and other drivers are all dead? \s (I know "living wage" is the hip buzzword, but it is a poor phrase, is hyperbolic, and creates a false picture that when these workers finish their shift they are going to go find some secluded gutter to die in from malnutrition)

A hip buzzword from the 1930s, or earlier? "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

Being old does not preclude it from being a hip buzzword. At any rate, even if that wasn't the best adjective for it, the term "living wage" was just as nonsensical in 1933 as it is today.

Re: Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

#420

Post by jonahx » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

andypants wrote: post #389

ghshephard wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people (as least zero of the people I associate with) have any problem with tipping in the United States - it's just so understood it's what you do when in a restaurant, that the only question is usually one of "(A) I'm Lazy, don't want to calculate, 20% tip, (B) I'm being anal, figure out exact 18.5% tip, (C) Got poor service, 15% tip, (D) Waiter spit in my food and was really obnoxious/rude to me - 10…

> Waiter spit in my food and was really obnoxious/rude to me - 10% tip It is absolutely insane to me that you would tip anything at all in that case. US tipping culture is crazy. In what situation would you give 0% tip?

It's very uncommon, but if the server is outright hostile I'd give 0% no problem. It's only happened a few times in my entire life, though.