Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering

Post by rryan » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 11:53 PM UTC

congerous wrote: post #51

tyingq wrote: post #2

There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original r…

There's some baseless speculation in this thread about what's Singhal's departure meant for Google search. It's important to remember that Singhal was committed Google's knowledge graph, a painstaking, manually constructed graph of entities and relationships that surfaces the occasional answer (ask Google what the capital of Azerbaijan is and you will see a knowledge graph answer). Knowledge graphs are brittle, hard…

Post by carussell » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:08 AM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #96

carussell wrote: post #62

I'd like to see Uber get into mapping. Besides Uber's core business that everyone focuses on, they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway off the ground and they do food deliver through UberEATS. In either case, they've got a vested interest in making sure high-quality mapping data is available—higher quality than what Google provides. Given their deals with tons of local businesses through UberEATS, they'…

"they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway off the ground" In the sense that a working model airplane gives me a space program that's halfway off the ground. And why would they improve OSM at all? Actually collecting and cleaning mapping data is not cheap. There's no incentive in contributing to OSM, it doesn't build a moat, it doesn't further their access to markets,...

Post by beguiledfoil » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:14 AM UTC

throwaway91111 wrote: post #35

grandalf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes is a few upsurges in populism and Uber might be forced to do it on someone else's terms and without preparing investors for it. Even with first world labor standards, Uber is a superb business model. I had Uber eats delivered the other day by a guy driving a beautiful newish BMW who seemed like an out of work white collar worker, not a livery driver. There is tremendous value in having short-term, minima…

Forced how? I have friends that eat because of Uber. What leverage do they have against Uber? This is a tragedy of the commons problem: Uber is footing an addiction to cheap transport nobody knows how to satiate.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:30 AM UTC

beguiledfoil wrote: post #106

throwaway91111 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forced how? I have friends that eat because of Uber. What leverage do they have against Uber? This is a tragedy of the commons problem: Uber is footing an addiction to cheap transport nobody knows how to satiate.

>Uber is footing an addiction to cheap transport nobody knows how to satiate. Just ride a bike. Not an option in the burbs, for sure, but taking an uber is not an efficiency gain the way public transit or bicycles are. IMHO low density communities will die. They cannot be saved.

Post by ctrl_freak » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:43 AM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #107

oculusthrift wrote: post #5

I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414

I think there are real economies of scale in ride service. Once you have enough customers your cars are better utilised and your costs are lower, this means that while Uber's cap table may be all fucked up by the time it happens, it will lose less money competing on price than new entrants. Depending on how large these economies of scale are, even the fact that a new entrants would be doing less volume (and therefore…