Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

blog.waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 248 posts

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#211

Post by perryizgr8 »

Everyone except Tesla is approaching self-driving in the wrong way.

1. This is a looooong term bet, so you need revenue NOW to sustain your company until you get to full self driving.

2. The self driving car should be a practical product, to be purchased and operated by actual common people who drive cars today. So you need to avoid $10k LIDAR spinners on top of the car.

3. Self driving is not going to be a binary thing. It will be a gradual increasing capability. You need to let people use it in every intermediate stage and feed telemetry back to you so you can incorporate it in your development.

4. Self driving cannot rely on extremely detailed mapping of all public roads that exist on the planet. The system will have to be smart enough to figure out what to do, without specialised external help.

If you don't follow these, be ready for a long haul (10-20 years) without any revenue, because that's what it is going to take. And google does not seem to be the long-haul type of operation that this needs, judging from https://killedbygoogle.com/.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#212

Post by axaxs »

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…

Man, this is spot on and great insight. I'd love if people were really free to be so honest without repurcussion. Thanks for doing it.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#213

Post by spaceflunky »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #211

Everyone except Tesla is approaching self-driving in the wrong way. 1. This is a looooong term bet, so you need revenue NOW to sustain your company until you get to full self driving. 2. The self driving car should be a practical product, to be purchased and operated by actual common people who drive cars today. So you need to avoid $10k LIDAR spinners on top of the car. 3. Self driving is not going to be a binary th…

As Elon said, 'everyone chasing LIDAR is doomed to failed. DOOOOOOMED.'

Waymo is just one big cope party filled with HBS grads who can't fathom that they didn't succeed at something.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#214

Post by tehlike »

liaukovv wrote: post #137
lumost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They are doing share buybacks which is usually deemed more tax efficient.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#215

Post by craftinator »

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 don't know if the attitude has changed since I was there but people creating $20M/year business revenue streams were not considered "successful" back in the day. I found that somewhat self defeating.

It's the "I stumbled onto this giant pile of cash, and if you don't stumble onto one too, you obviously aren't stumbling hard enough" attitude of management.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#216

Post by craftinator »

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.

Did you forget what you originally wrote? You said:

> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?

And I pointed out that the parent comment had already provided an example. Now you are arguing with me that the example given, about Garmin Autoland, isn't comparable to self-driving... Which isn't at all the example you asked for in the first place. Maybe focus and read a little more, write a little less. You'll be more easily understood.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#217

Post by ChuckMcM »

petra wrote: post #141
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…

Maybe businesses don't need revenue streams. I wonder by how much the Moonshot program, increased Google's Market Cap.

This is a fair question. After all, an increase in market cap means, as execs, you're paper wealth is that much greater.

The challenge is that market cap isn't durable. Specifically businesses that just provide net revenue, even if it is only a "small" amount relative to the overall company, are helpful in mitigating shocks to the market.

So it may be intoxicating that the stock going up 10% adds a few billion dollars to your net worth, but it can also go down 10 or 20% and that wealth goes poof![1]

[1] The reality is that paper wealth is not worth anything, only after it has been diversified can you really count it as part of your net worth. Again, this is my lived experience :-).

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#218

Post by foobiekr »

solutron wrote: post #161
modeless wrote: post #54

I still think it was a mistake to hire this guy and partner with the auto industry dinosaurs. Should have kept going down the path of being independent and building their own cars without steering wheels. I never liked "Waymo" as a brand either. Maybe just retrofitting off the shelf cars made sense if they thought they needed hundreds of thousands of cars ASAP, but it turns out they would have had plenty of time to d…

This is why full self driving coming from a company like Tesla matters. It's vertical integration with hardware, manufacturing, battery and chip production makes it so they don't need any of the OEM legacy auto companies. They are already building the best electric cars available. Nobody comes close. When FSD 9.x is released the zero-to-one moment happens and there'll be no going back. The other companies are going t…

Tesla's FSD doesn't work and they basically admit it is a level 2 system and may never be more. It's been Elon with the football and Charlie Brown running for the kick over and over.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#219

Post by foobiekr »

0xEFF wrote: post #189
echelon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to longbets $5000/20 years: We won't have self driving cars that replace 30% or more of driving on existing roads and highways by 2040. The problem is too hard and everyone's drunk the ML kool-aid. (Just like everyone is drinking the NFT kool-aid right now.) Hype, unrealistic dreams, and spin. We'll be on Mars before we have generally available self-driving cars that do not require humans.

I'd consider taking the bet, but only against, "We'll be on Mars before we have generally available self-driving cars that do not require humans." Both seem unlikely.

I think we should throw commercial fusion in there for the trifecta.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#220

Post by endisneigh »

craftinator wrote: post #216
endisneigh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you forget what you originally wrote? You said: > Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore? And I pointed out that the parent comment had already provided an example. Now you are arguing with me that the example given, about Garmin Autoland, isn't comparable to self-driving... Which isn't at all the e…

> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?

My understanding from looking at research is that airplanes by experienced pilots rarely killed people... and they... still don't even when (partially) automated? There doesn't appear to be definitive evidence that autopilot is safer [2] as many of the innovations in safety have been conflated with procedural improvements.

In fact there are studies [1] that suggest autopilot is actually making flights unsafe as pilots are becoming complacent and airplanes do not flight themselves completely from point to point including taxiing.

In other words, no, plane automation is not an example as it does not satisfy the criteria of "generally does not" compared to the baseline of no automation.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872088502700...

[2]https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/publication/...

Try not to be so condescending, sheesh.

Post reply on HN