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CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

blog.waymo.com

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Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#131

Post by dealforager »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational complexity having those kinds of projects would bring.

I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#132

Post by CobrastanJorji »

endisneigh wrote: post #83
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the ongoing pandemic doom and gloom. https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only…

> On the subject of automation. Humanity is on track to have the computational power to perform whole brain emulation decades before 2100. Even if we don't solve the general AI problem through other pathways, we will solve it through this path. Ethical problems aside, once this is achieved, everything will be automatable at a human level of competence. Is this actually true? I haven't heard of this. You're saying we…

No, it's not remotely true. Roughly equating neurons to petaflops, counting flops, drawing the best fitting straight line, and then announcing a date where the line gets high enough is not a remotely reasonable way to estimate a "worst case guarantee" date.

It's not impossible that some sort of thing would happen, but anyone who tells you that it can't possibly fail to be achieved in the next 80 years is lying, either to your or to themselves.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#133

Post by Lavery »

choppaface wrote: post #82

All of the big players in self-driving have shown that while they can try to solve the tech problem, nobody can solve the team problem. Self-driving brings together people with very diverse backgrounds (perception, planning, controls, hardware, safety, rideshare product, etc), very diverse incentives (established automakers vs start-up founders vs VC investors), and throws them in a pot with a huge amount of money an…

>It's surreal to see people minted with money for life and yet deliver so little value. That sort of arbitrage usually only happens on Wall Street.

This must be a joke? The multi million-dollar exit with zero actual earnings is an almost uniquely tech phenomenon. There are Wall Street-ers that earned high pay for generating high earnings that many years later were found to be value-destructive, but at least at the time they were paid, they were cash-generating. That Wall Street jobs paid so much was because comp was structurally a function of cash generated.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#134

Post by cobookman »

dealforager wrote: post #131
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational complexity having those kinds of projects would bring. I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.

How many XXB/year companies start off making XXB/year or have clear visibility to XXB/year near-term?

For example, I doubt the AirBNB founders early-on and/or 5-10 years ago even imagined they'd have multiple billions of revenue.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#135

Post by anyfoo »

endisneigh wrote: post #61
craftinator wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, like the entire rest of his comment? Garmin Autoland...

The Garmin Autoland is not equivalent to full self driving? That's like self parking which has existed for a while now. In any case planes are inherently orders of magnitude safer than cars to begin with due to the lack of obstacles/chaos.

It frustrates me to no end when people compare autolanding (even the Garmin kind), or worse, general autopilots, with self-driving cars.

Anyone who does that has either never traveled in an airplane (even just as a passenger), or just never observed and thought about the vastly different levels of interaction planes have with their environment.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#136

Post by snide »

choppaface wrote: post #82

All of the big players in self-driving have shown that while they can try to solve the tech problem, nobody can solve the team problem. Self-driving brings together people with very diverse backgrounds (perception, planning, controls, hardware, safety, rideshare product, etc), very diverse incentives (established automakers vs start-up founders vs VC investors), and throws them in a pot with a huge amount of money an…

I was talking with a friend who worked at IBM in the heyday. He mentioned that a lot of the time, it wasn't so much that talent got used, it was that talent was not used elsewhere. Stiffing innovation is just as effective as breeding it when you're already on top.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#137

Post by liaukovv »

lumost wrote: post #123
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

I swear that there is a resource curse for businesses with a singular "successful" product line. In order to expand the business and not have people sucked into the "successful" part, the teams need to be split. Once the teams are split the "successful" team wonders why the "new" team sucks. In the case that the successful business is Ads/Search... it's tough to compete. I'd imagine even within Ads/Search there is a…

Sounds to me like what they shoukd be doing is instead of trying to "reinvest" profits from ads instead pay them out to shareholders so they can more efficiently redistibute it to multiple smaller businesses

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#138

Post by erikgaas »

ripper1138 wrote: post #117
joefourier wrote: post #50

Some comments are saying self-driving cars are not currently possible and that Waymo isn't successful, but aren't they currently available to the public in some areas in Phoenix, with no safety drivers? There may be many limitations, but self-driving in sunny flat suburban areas would already cover a decent portion of the American market. Sure they might not be ready for chaotic, busy city centres or regions with har…

I encourage you to watch a video of a current Waymo ride in Phoenix. In one ride I watched, the very first turn it made out of a parking lot should have been a left turn, but it turned right instead and went through residential streets to get back in the right direction. It is nice that they have deployed to the public, but I doubt anyone capable of driving themselves will use it any time soon if it can't even make l…

I took a waymo in Chandler that had no safety driver and it was able to make unprotected left turns just fine.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#139

Post by tmsh »

Just wanted to say, from the outside, John Krafcik seemed to me like a strong leader.

I used to live in Mountain View and at one point I saw a few Waymo vans (this was 3-4 years ago when they were more active) speeding on El Camino (just barely, and being manually driven at the time, but even though I work for a competitor I was concerned if an accident happened it'd be a bad publicity event; i.e., Waymo vehicles should always be extra, extra careful, etc.); and it just made me wonder what was going on. So I connected with him on LinkedIn; and then ended up reaching out to some QA folks I believe.

Anyway, John was super responsive and I always appreciated that. From what I could see (just one anecdote), he was a CEO who dived deep into customer concerns. There's a lot to be said for that.

My two cents is it's a very delicate space. One bad event and the whole industry can be set back. So it's an area (despite extremely cutting-edge tech; deep learning, etc.) that has to roll out gradually.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#140

Post by shuckles »

Lavery wrote: post #133
choppaface wrote: post #82

All of the big players in self-driving have shown that while they can try to solve the tech problem, nobody can solve the team problem. Self-driving brings together people with very diverse backgrounds (perception, planning, controls, hardware, safety, rideshare product, etc), very diverse incentives (established automakers vs start-up founders vs VC investors), and throws them in a pot with a huge amount of money an…

>It's surreal to see people minted with money for life and yet deliver so little value. That sort of arbitrage usually only happens on Wall Street. This must be a joke? The multi million-dollar exit with zero actual earnings is an almost uniquely tech phenomenon. There are Wall Street-ers that earned high pay for generating high earnings that many years later were found to be value-destructive, but at least at the ti…

The difference between “selling a growth story” and “selling current profits booked by incurring future liabilities” seems entirely like a semantic one. What’s the practical difference?
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