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Waze Carpool

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Re: Waze Carpool

#81

Post by sneak »

scrollaway wrote: post #70
untog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many great examples of Google failing to internationalise, but Google Fi requiring a US billing address is not one of them. Fi is a domestic cell phone service, it provides international roaming as a bonus to its US customers - at much increased cost (to them) compared to domestic service. I wouldn't be surprised if roaming permanently was a violation of their terms of service (it is for Three in the UK, wh…

You're making my point. They made a domestic cell phone service and, despite the service working worldwide, failed to bring it to other countries.

“working” in this sense could mean “operating at a loss”.

Re: Waze Carpool

#82

Post by untog »

scrollaway wrote: post #70
untog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many great examples of Google failing to internationalise, but Google Fi requiring a US billing address is not one of them. Fi is a domestic cell phone service, it provides international roaming as a bonus to its US customers - at much increased cost (to them) compared to domestic service. I wouldn't be surprised if roaming permanently was a violation of their terms of service (it is for Three in the UK, wh…

You're making my point. They made a domestic cell phone service and, despite the service working worldwide, failed to bring it to other countries.

You're ignoring my point. The costs internationally are far higher than they are domestically. The roaming agreements they have with those networks almost certainly prohibits full time use by a customer. Sometimes there are valid reasons to not launch a service, particularly when the whole point of it is to be low cost!

I agree with criticism when Google doesn't internationally launch something they control entirely (say, the Pixel phone). But this is not that.

Re: Waze Carpool

#83

Post by joeblau »

mankyd wrote: post #62
joeblau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the opposite experience, but this was probably further back then you. I remember trying to call Google to get info about Google maps and it was just a run around. I spent 3 hours trying to figure out who controlled the map tiles behind Apples Maps powered by Google and got nowhere. Even if you go to Google's contact page now[1] it's obscure and the first thing they try to do is shuttle you off to forums or a…

Perhaps the difference is that Wifi, Fi, and the store in general are all product you pay for, whereas maps is not?

Yeah that's a possibility. As I mentioned, I haven't really tried to interact with Googles customer service in the past few years so maybe/hopefully it's a lot better now than it was then.

Re: Waze Carpool

#85

Post by dwightgunning »

nerdponx wrote: post #69
pavel_lishin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the pure software world solution. What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin? What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope th…

This is exactly how Uber turned into a taxi service. They tried ridesharing, it turns out that people in cars do sketchy things and piss each other off, or worse. I would rather see local grassroots organizations take on this project.

Any references to stories/articles about their ride sharing efforts? Was it prior to their incorporation as UberCab or an experiment from further along?

Re: Waze Carpool

#86

Post by smn1234 »

nerdponx wrote: post #69
pavel_lishin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the pure software world solution. What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin? What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope th…

This is exactly how Uber turned into a taxi service. They tried ridesharing, it turns out that people in cars do sketchy things and piss each other off, or worse. I would rather see local grassroots organizations take on this project.

I don't doubt you but can you reference the source for this?

Re: Waze Carpool

#87

Post by freehunter »

dmix wrote: post #49
freehunter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Facebook's done enough of that class segregation for us already I'm convinced the Bay Area itself has done enough of that segregation. Isn't that the entire reason people move there? Every time I ask why someone moved to SV, they say it's because that's where all of the tech talent is. Why is your startup headquartered in SV? Because that's where all the tech talent is. The only reason SV exists is because it's self…

I'm not sure why anyone would need to feel guilty or worry about that fact though. People do that everywhere. Toronto is famous for it's diversity and multiculturalism but the entire city is finely divided into various ethnic, cultural, and work enclaves (little korea, little ethiopia, 2x little italys, etc). And it works great for the most part, there's little ethnic or political tension, at least within the city pr…

>I'm not sure why anyone would need to worry about that fact

SV is famous for solving problems that impact SV or cities like SV. Whenever I hear the question from startup/techie folks "are we in a bubble", I always think the answer is "yes, but not how you think". We're not in a bubble of too many high valuation startups, we're in a bubble where we don't understand the rest of the world around us. Because we're living paycheck to paycheck on a $250k salary in a $5k/mo studio apartment getting our food from Postmates and having drones deliver our Amazon packages. And after a while, you start to think that's just how it is. But it's not. Not for the vast majority of people who don't live in SV, Austin, or Seattle.

That's the value diversity brings, that's the danger of suburbs everyone's been talking about since forever, and that's where the Bay Area is going. Quickly.

The closest Whole Foods to me is over an hour and a half away. Until last year, the closest Trader Joe's was over 3 hours away. I work in tech making six figures, and my neighbor (living in a detached, single family home) is a diesel mechanic. The guy on the other side owns his own home but just works as a cashier at the local grocery store, because our cost of living isn't ridiculous and you can afford a house on $12/hr. Even myself, I recently got schooled when I said $65k/yr doesn't make you rich: the number of people popping out of the wood-work to say what making $65k would mean to them and what luxuries it could afford them was astounding. Just hitting $65k would double most of their income.

We don't have Uber around here. We don't have Postmates. Amazon doesn't deliver same-day. We can't get Google to drop off our groceries for us. Our employers don't have a bus to take us to work. Some people may say "but all of those luxuries are the reason why we moved to SV!", but in response I say all of those luxuries are reasons massing together in SV is so harmful. First, it colors our worldview to think our life is normal. Secondly, it ignores everyone else in the world and the real problems they have.

I'm not even talking about segregating races and ethnicities. I'm sure there's plenty of diversity of skin color and ethnic background in SV. But there's a lot more diversity that exists than the ones the law says you have to respect. And their problems aren't being solved by people in SV, because people in SV don't even know they exist.

Re: Waze Carpool

#88

Post by Tiktaalik »

_m8fo wrote: post #19

Why isn't there a service that says: 1. Hey this is my route every morning. 2. Lets you see people's routes and "join". This doesn't need to be a centralized service. People could organize things among themselves. There are carpooling sites, but it requires a critical mass to be useful.

Why don't we hire a bunch of experts to figure out what the most common and efficient routes are for the most people and then hire people to run those routes regularly?

Oops I just invented buses again, just the rest of these transportation startups eventually end up doing.

The extremely boring answer to our transportation problems is to properly fund public transportation. We've known the solution for ages, but it's kept down by the wealthy class who don't want to pay for public works that would benefit everyone.

Re: Waze Carpool

#90

Post by pron »

cornholio wrote: post #79
pavel_lishin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the pure software world solution. What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin? What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope th…

The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc. The pure software world exists from Google's perspective, they provide zero support and then it's just a matter of individual choice if you want to use the service or not. Google can go a long way into making this significantly safer than random pick-up: you can select female only drivers or riders, only riders from…

> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc.

It's not so simple. Normally people, at least in cities, rarely hitchhike or take up hitchhikers. The goal here is to make it acceptable, and naturally greatly increase the frequency this is happening. This can be reasonably taken as an endorsement by Google to the driver/passenger, because it is -- they want this to happen more often, and are essentially saying "it's OK to hitchhike through our app". This means that they can reasonably be seen as taking part in the entire transaction and assuming some portion of the liability.

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