Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

If Google is the only company with this information how come all the car manufacturers have active projects that don't rely on their data. It's because Google has nothing that other companies don't have/need. It's not like Google magically acquired all their data. They bought most of it.

They know the start and end points of the trip and can make a decision whether it can be handled with an autonomous car or a human driver at the outset. They could serve major routes like airports to hotels via autonomous vehicle to begin with and handle everything else with people. That could still represent a massive cost saving.

Guber. I like it!

I doubt they will be that bad. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't be surprised if google offers free rides, you just have to watch advertisements, login with your google account, and allow them to store all the data on the ride, potentially even microphone/video data. This could be invaluable (think eye-tracking, reaction detection, mood detection, common phrases, it's a data miners heaven) for not only reactions to advertisements (and then subtly tweaking the algorithm on a person-person basis) but detection of your mood to decide how to advertise.

Going out to the bar? Show the user a drink you know is slightly higher than you know what your user would normally buy.

Coming come from the bar? Show them late night snacking, you can drive them through wherever or they can order right from the interface and it will be delivered to your house.

It could use your spoken conversations to better do search result targeting on a geographical and user level. CGI + TTS can personalize a number of ads just for you "Hey Josh, I saw you bought a domain earlier today, would you like to spin up an instance on Google cloud?". The possibilities are near limitless.

I'm not saying Google wouldn't stumble and fall on something like this. I'm sure in the early days before advertisers craft ads for this medium it will be rough with repetitive ads that are more of an annoyance but advertisers will like having your credit card on file. Soon the advertisers will catch on and provide "rich ads" that allow for ordering/buying/subscribing/+1-ing through the ad (tap on screen to interact or through your phone/tablet/laptop, did I mention? Free WIFI of course, there is even a chromebook you can use if you need).

Maybe it's such that you owe $W for the ride but you can take off X% if you allow Y "permission" or complete Z assignment and there exists enough of Z's / Y's such that the ride can be free. I'm sure it won't be presented that way, it will sneakier, maybe they can even offer users to give them $X if they allow it all. I can see pollers loving be able to target specific areas with questions (and maybe get unique poll results, of course unique impressions does cost more, a lot more). Local businesses running ads during business hours to offer to give users no ads for the rest of the ride if they let the Google car bring them by to buy something, it's on the way to their destination and the next item on their schedule isn't until $X and they have time. Advertise a restaurant and let the user make a reservation right there, don't worry, we put it on your calendar.

There is lot that sounds terrible about that world but I'm conflicted. If it leads to extinction of (over a span of a reasonable number of years for the complete transition) car accidents/deaths (through the removal of both the impaired and just plain bad drivers) due to it's "free" price tag. If it leads to an increased mobility for the lower class now that they have access to transportation. If it push highly fuel efficient or ideally electric cars (even further ideally charged by a solar recharging station). If it does even one of these things then I'm not sure how terrible it would really be...

I'm sure that there will exist, for a time, a netjets-esque "netrides" that either Google or another player will offer that uses nicer/better-kept cars. I'd hope there were online exchanges (or smaller groups running software off github that runs on a Raspberry Pi 3 B :)) where owners of such cars could put their car in a pool of other cars that could be used for rides. You find a way to even out total milage over all cars and users can block out time (daily commutes, special events, vacations, etc). I do worry that Google could eventually choke out these groups due to convenience, cost, and apathy but I have hope. And frankly the car manufacturers only seem to care about driverless cars (no I don't care how long they say some of this has been in development, I'd bet it's underfunded or a joke until recently) now that Google has overtaken them. So while they may all develop driverless cars (or licence it from Google) I'm going to credit a lot of the potential benefits/gains to Google for pushing the envelop and getting them off their asses.

What I'm saying in this extremely long reply (Sorry, I love talking/thinking about this stuff), is that yeah it might be a little sucky but look at the potential gains and the potential alternatives to the "Google car" and see it's not all bad.

Excessive. You can call an airline, hotel or taxi company directly, text your friends or pay for dinner with cash. Your inner paranoid is drawn to the convenience of the services that google offers. If you don't want one company to have a lot of information about you, then don't use that company for everything.

Google loves data. But generally in the aggregate, not the personal. I've yet to see anything even remotely creepy of any kind from google advertising. "Hey karmacondon, we saw that you recently booked a trip to las vegas, took a self-driving cab to the Bunny Ranch and used your Google Wallet to pay for two hours with someone named 'Bubbles'. Can we interest you in some anti-itch creme?". That kind of personal intrusion just doesn't match anything I've seen from Google, and until that day comes I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

MasterCard and Visa know more about you than Google ever will. You can't book a flight or check into a hotel without using a credit card, which is directly attached to your name and is trivially subpoenable. If you're really worried, there are ways to live a cash only existence, but it isn't easy. Some level of trust is required to live in modern society. It's good to be skeptical, but it always comes down to the level of inconvenience you're willing to trade for privacy.