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Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#101

Post by amadeuspagel »

krebby wrote: post #72
makestuff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty confident google could spin up an org to replicate the uber app in a few months/maybe a year. However, Uber obviously cannot spin up an org to replicate self driving vehicles in a few months. By that logic I would say Waymo has all of the power since they could develop their own app and undercut uber on pricing. The customers would instantly leave as it is a race to the bottom with ride share.

I think you're underplaying the difficulty of what Uber has built. Uber is an operations-heavy business. Determining pricing strategies, handling incidents, and working with local governments is at the core of its service. Google has traditionally shied away from businesses that require big operational investments in real-world assets the way that, say, Amazon or Airbnb have. These take time to build properly, and is…

Waymo already has to deal with local governments.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#102

Post by nojs »

xur17 wrote: post #69
omneity wrote: post #25

Uber moving strategically into the beginning of their late game. Interesting times. I suspect that Uber's main added value is a "safer" way for Waymo to increase the reach of their technology with lesser blowback against their own reputation (Uber did this, Uber did that ...), and to make it more mature, even more than the money potentially being exchanged here.

I think it also helps Waymo fill in the gaps between markets that they support. Customers get an app that works pretty much anywhere, and Waymo can drop into any given market with 10k self driving cars pretty much overnight.

This. Spinning up an Uber app clone is easy, actually running the service and having it available everywhere is hard and not something Google is likely to be good at.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#103

Post by hbn »

yalogin wrote: post #89

I still don’t understand the strategy for Waymo. After running that taxi service in phoenix for this long they resorted to partnering with Uber, it’s a huge failure. What does Uber bring to the table at all? An app that is easily replicable and with google’s reputation they can easily get customers off of Uber to their own platform. It’s a colossal failure. I was really hoping they would use Waze for this purpose. In…

Just spitballing - I'm sure they can do the app part easily, but I think the harder part is legislation. And I don't know if Google is in much of a position to just start popping up in cities as transport competition like Uber did, whereas it might be an easier sell if it's just a new service in Uber which already exists that has the technology supplied by Google/Waymo.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#104

Post by aardvarkr »

nerdchum wrote: post #91

Why is autonomous driving being pursued but not remote driving? Why can I have a seat at my house with controls and drive my Uber/18 wheeler from my house?

Remote driving would likely result in worse safety with very little gained by a commercial transportation company. They still have to pay for a driver but now that driver is staring at a screen 12 hours a day. Humans are already mediocre drivers when physically present and that would get so much worse if they were doing everything remotely instead

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#105

Post by metadaemon »

mdale wrote: post #59

Google owns a bit over 5% of Uber at 70B and a very high percentage of waymo at 30B evaluation. (last measured) so incentive is for Waymo to succeed / grow. It seems counter intuitive to me that they do a strategic partnership with Uber given low switching cost of using another app if it had meaningful cost benefits to the consumer. Additional Google owns the Android platform so could leverage that to it's advantages…

This also looks slightly bad on Uber as it had its own autonomous driving division that I suspect isn't doing well anymore.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#106

Post by frutiger »

mikeortman wrote: post #93

On a side note, I don't think anything screams big company enterprise more than contracts being announced with a horizontal bar between logos

> with a horizontal bar between logos

I was very intrigued until I opened the article and realized you meant a vertical bar.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#107

Post by TOMDM »

nerdchum wrote: post #91

Why is autonomous driving being pursued but not remote driving? Why can I have a seat at my house with controls and drive my Uber/18 wheeler from my house?

I have literally never used an Internet connection that I feel is reliable enough to consider driving a real car over it

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#108

Post by newleaf »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #85
vasilipupkin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

give me 3 good software developers and I can give you an Uber app maybe in 3-6 months? but what I can't give you is uber app being on every iPhone in the country.

No but if you're Google you can put it on literally every android phone quite quickly.

Not just that, but you can put it in front of every Google Maps user.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#109

Post by [deleted] »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #85
vasilipupkin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

give me 3 good software developers and I can give you an Uber app maybe in 3-6 months? but what I can't give you is uber app being on every iPhone in the country.

No but if you're Google you can put it on literally every android phone quite quickly.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#110

Post by vasilipupkin »

newleaf wrote: post #108
sebzim4500 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but if you're Google you can put it on literally every android phone quite quickly.

Not just that, but you can put it in front of every Google Maps user.

you can, but I am used to using uber app to call an uber.
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