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Google launches Uber rival RideWith

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Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#141

Post by arebop »

duaneb wrote: post #117
IgorPartola wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Google want it? It's simple. Google is an advertising company. The more free time you have where you have nothing but your phone or computer, the more time you'll spend searching for things, and therefore clicking on their ads. An average person with a 30+ minute commute would sure as hell do a lot of shopping if they didn't have to drive. While we are all waiting on self-driving cars, this is another step i…

Why do people talk about Google being an advertising company when, while it's a significant fraction of current revenue, it's also only a small portion of their interests and investments.

The first time you hear it, it sounds surprising. Then someone explains about revenue and it makes sense. So then you want to share the cleverness.

Of course, it's actually a pretty shallow analysis, unsupported by the company's history and inconsistent with some of the company's current behavior. How useful is it really to consider Google as being in the same equivalence class as TBWA\CHIAT\DAY? Well never mind, the meme is sticky!

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#142

Post by LordKano »

shostack wrote: post #127
LordKano wrote: post #115

Who's going to trust this? Google is so quick to terminate technologies that I'm hesitant to try anything new that they bring to market.

May I ask why you need to trust this from that standpoint? With other Google services I agree with the concern. In this case, if they discontinued, you revert to your old way of commuting. I don't imagine anyone doing anything stupid like selling their car over this. It's like Shopping Express for me. Was AMAZING while it was free and I used it every week. Now I don't because the fee is in place. Since Amazon pantry…

I didn't flesh out my thought process but I'm thinking that there has to be some real reason to go with this over Uber or Lyft.

Obviously, no one should restructure their life around the availability of this kind of service. I'm just saying that this feels like bandwagoning to me. I can't be the only one thinking that this isn't going to last long. Uber and Lyft will be in that business until they close up shop or are regulated out of a market.

If you're going to try a non-traditional taxi-type service, why go with Google over one of the existing players?

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#143

Post by mdaniel »

jnbiche wrote: post #83
onion2k wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have called Uber a "taxi rival" when they were an app for hiring a town car either. Things change. This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last. Considering how much they've invested in autonomous vehicles only a crazy person would believe they're going to leave the entire market for self-driving taxis wide open for Uber etc. Google will have a ta…

> This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last. What makes you think it won't be their last? Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim. It's like, their modus operandi.

> Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim.

But only after a ton of people have started to use it, and weren't warned that Google was "toe-ing the water": health, reader, code(!), I'm certain there are others ...

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#144

Post by minthd »

jellicle wrote: post #133
shostack wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a big factor to consider here is that while Uber has a head start, Google has a massive chest derived from other products and political clout to deal with the regulatory piece. They can absolutely price Uber and others out of the market on this if they felt like it.

Since this is actual carpooling, unlike Uber, there won't be any regulatory pushback. Every jurisdiction loves carpooling.

I don't know. Carpooling could significantly hurt tax revenues in Israel. But of course they can tax through the app.

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#145

Post by ikeboy »

jellicle wrote: post #136
ismail wrote: post #113

Note: We have built a marketplace to connect drivers and passengers, so we understand some of the challenges in scaling a business like this. Like all marketplaces, you are faced with the chicken and egg problem. The market place is supply constrained. There is demand for rides but not enough matching supply. People with cars much prefer to travel alone due the inconvenience of picking up others. So, in order to get…

Google knows where every Android user and most of everyone else lives and works. Frankly it would be trivial to ask Android users a question: "Are you interested in carpooling? [Y/N]" and then prompt them when the guy three doors down also answers yes.

We both know they'd be (rightly) yelled at by all of us if they did that.

Waze, fine. By using the app, you agree they might monetize it, or whatever. But pushing ads to stock android is a huge no-no.

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#146

Post by minthd »

jellicle wrote: post #136
ismail wrote: post #113

Note: We have built a marketplace to connect drivers and passengers, so we understand some of the challenges in scaling a business like this. Like all marketplaces, you are faced with the chicken and egg problem. The market place is supply constrained. There is demand for rides but not enough matching supply. People with cars much prefer to travel alone due the inconvenience of picking up others. So, in order to get…

Google knows where every Android user and most of everyone else lives and works. Frankly it would be trivial to ask Android users a question: "Are you interested in carpooling? [Y/N]" and then prompt them when the guy three doors down also answers yes.

Not only android. Waze is very popular in israel, even on IOS.

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#147

Post by shostack »

LordKano wrote: post #142
shostack wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask why you need to trust this from that standpoint? With other Google services I agree with the concern. In this case, if they discontinued, you revert to your old way of commuting. I don't imagine anyone doing anything stupid like selling their car over this. It's like Shopping Express for me. Was AMAZING while it was free and I used it every week. Now I don't because the fee is in place. Since Amazon pantry…

I didn't flesh out my thought process but I'm thinking that there has to be some real reason to go with this over Uber or Lyft. Obviously, no one should restructure their life around the availability of this kind of service. I'm just saying that this feels like bandwagoning to me. I can't be the only one thinking that this isn't going to last long. Uber and Lyft will be in that business until they close up shop or ar…

Hard to say at this point given that this hasn't launched yet. I'll need to see what it looks like when it does its pilot in Israel.

Google's long-term play has a decent chance of involving self-driving cars and monetizing via advertising and data with some fee from the ride. Nothing says "open up your wallets" to large brick and mortar advertisers like "we literally drove the customer to your doorstep."

Getting users hooked and getting this tested via commute data is a great approach before branching out to something else. It also lets users browse the web, and Google likely has clear visibility into the search behavior of users searching while in their rides to determine the incremental ad revenue this enabled.

Google doesn't need to offer this for free to provide a great experience at a lower price than any current competitors like Uber or Lyft. They have substantial revenue from other areas to fuel this and so can price their competition out of the market. Other companies do the same thing to squeeze into a dominant position in a market they want to enter.

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#148

Post by hayksaakian »

hackuser wrote: post #138

One big advantage of Google's solution over Uber's is the relative climate change impact of your transportation choice. In reverse order of benefit, based on my amatuer analysis: * For a baseline, let's use one party (generally a person or a couple) with a personal car. Traveling someplace creates P marginal greenhouse gasses (GHG), plus there is the fixed cost of manufacturing the car (but I have no idea how much th…

the ZipCar difference is the same as buying a used car that's already been manufactured and counted towards another person's P value

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#149

Post by shostack »

minthd wrote: post #144
jellicle wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is actual carpooling, unlike Uber, there won't be any regulatory pushback. Every jurisdiction loves carpooling.

I don't know. Carpooling could significantly hurt tax revenues in Israel. But of course they can tax through the app.

Could you expand a bit further on the tax revenue impact?

Re: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

#150

Post by vxNsr »

cryptoz wrote: post #90
jnbiche wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last. What makes you think it won't be their last? Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim. It's like, their modus operandi.

I think it's pretty clear that this won't be their last effort in this area. In this case, you can take the very-close-proximity efforts by them - self driving cars - that they are taking very seriously, and extend that expectation here. Does it really make sense that Google would build self-driving cars without also thinking about ride sharing technology and userbase? I think the primary use case of Google's cars wi…

It's possible that this is like what they did with motorola, initially it looked like they were trying to have vertical integration similar to apple, but then for other reasons felt compelled to give that up.

In any case this is dissimilar to most google projects because it looks like it's mostly under Waze's control which atm has a lot of autonomy, it's likely being called a google project by the Waze team because of the brand recognition and by reporters because it's more interesting to talk about how google might be putting itself in a precarious legal position (vis-a-vis a conflict of interest), instead of saying Waze created yet another ridesharing app.

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