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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

#151

Post by lesuorac »

boringg wrote: post #84
hardware2win wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, that wasnt some random ass engineer :) >In 2019, Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets. In August 2020, Levandowski pled guilty to one of the 33 charges, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. >He was pardoned less than six months later on January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump's presidency.

I forgot he got pardoned. Trump presidency: if you have money you could use that money to literally buy a get out of jail card.

Effectively yes.

But a federal pardon is for federal crimes. So if a state such as New York convicted you then a presidential pardon won't save you.

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

#152

Post by bryanlarsen »

grumple wrote: post #123
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.

You're pretty wrong. No organization can just spin up large international companies. I don't know where you'd get such an idea from. Even the technical parts of Uber alone would take years to replicate. The app frontend? Sure, with manpower you can get that out in a few months. The backend, supporting infra, legal systems, customer support, relationships with users, restaurants, etc? Years to decades. Google could ne…

Trivial compared with getting regulatory approval for self-driving, with which it has a lot of overlap.

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

#153

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

bartwr wrote: post #51
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.

Spinning up the Uber App is most likely trivial. Spinning up the legal structure, figuring out all the local regulations and getting permits (it's not 2010 anymore! Many countries and cities regulate ride sharing pretty heavily) in a sane timeline is close to impossible. And it might be not something that an Alphabet company wants to do risk/ reputation-wise. Better to offload bad press (both related to ride sharing…

> figuring out all the local regulations and getting permits (it's not 2010 anymore!

Hm. This is like --

It's not 1066 any more, there are property rights now.

The original regulatory capture.

Step 1: Ignore the law; establish a fait accompli.

Step 2: Sanctify the new status quo.

Sad for a rule-follower to figure out that this is how things work.

On the other hand, I guess rule-following is low risk. For each William the Conqueror there were thousands of warriors who just got killed on the battlefield. And I'm sure the guy had to work really hard, you know, like nights and weekends.

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

#154

Post by krebby »

SilverBirch wrote: post #2

This is fascinating, obviously it makes a tonne of sense for uber as a platform to offer waymo's autonomous vehicles. The first question I had though was "who extracts value here". Does Waymo get to demand human-driver level prices and therefore capture loads of value or does Uber actually capture the value because they're where the customers are. But then I realised... it doesn't matter. Waymo is part of Alphabet, a…

If no one steps up to challenge Waymo in this space in a reasonable timeframe, Waymo wins. If they do, Uber wins.

Uber's play is as a platform. They win if there are several SDC providers (with working autonomy). As an analogy, they're Android; they want to own the network and have multiple operators plug into the Uber app, while the hardware makers don't want to do the work to spin up an expensive 2-way marketplace. Waymo is playing at the iPhone game. They want to be the biggest market operator, and can get away with not owning the top of the funnel for the time being. If other operators fall far behind in progress, Waymo will spin up the investment to vertically integrate and try to siphon Uber customers off that way.

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

#155

Post by bhelkey »

boh wrote: post #134

One thing that hasn't been addressed, given the limited test markets, is whether autonomous taxis actually will actually be popular and preferable among consumers. Theoretically having a car that drives itself seems like a great product/service, in practice it's more clunky and awkward than you would hope. From the experiences I've had, a human driver is undoubtedly the better option. Many things happen on the road w…

I imagine autonomous taxis will be significantly cheaper than driver taxis. From a quick search it looks like in general Uber drivers earn somewhere around $9 for a 30 minute ride [1].

[1] https://blog.completepayroll.com/fares-driver-pay-and-the-fi....

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

#156

Post by dweekly »

mcny wrote: post #118
vasilipupkin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> you can, but I am used to using uber app to call an uber. yes, waze had 100M+ users and still failed to have a successful launch with waze carpool. part of the problem is Google is too successful. If a business makes USD 10M a year and takes up a month worth of attention every year from the Alphabet CEO, they will probably shut it down before we can say Google Product Graveyard.

When I worked at Google our team came up with a data product that would have been pure margin and $75m/yr with customers lined up -- and I couldn't find a VP interested in cashing the checks because it wasn't on their annual OKRs.

Google is a great company but it has never been truly hungry because it has never faced an existential threat.

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

#157

Post by metalspot »

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…

> strategy for Waymo

getting their technology working profitably at scale is obviously the first step and it is taking much longer than expected.

> app that is easily replicable

Waymo already has their own app and will continue to. the problem is that if you only have limited service in one small market then nobody has that app installed.

business travel is a large and highly profitable segment of ride sharing and it is dominated by Uber because it has the largest install base.

> What does Uber bring to the table at all?

demand. Waymo only has to accept a ride request if it meets their profitability metrics so this deal is all upside for them. if they have more profitable demand through their own app then they use their fleet for that and if not they fall back to Uber and get some free advertising to Uber customers in the process.

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

#158

Post by sofixa »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #133
sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that, unlike with LLMs where a human always can and should fact check/reword before using, there is no such option with self driving. People's lives are literally directly at stake if things go wrong. For limited scenarios such as geofenced to a city with good weather, it seems that self driving cars (at least Waymo's tech) is good enough, baring some small lapses which are more funny than dangerous. A…

Cheap taxis could lead to people abandoning car ownership and this a huge reconfiguration of American cities. (if they end up cheaper than self owned cars)

If everyone still takes the taxi everywhere, what would be the reconfiguration about and where would it come from? Everyone will be still stuck in traffic due to the physical impossibility of fitting everyone in an individual vehicle on the roads at the same time.

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

#160

Post by kornhole »

35997279 wrote: post #16
kornhole wrote: post #9

If I can't bike or bus it, taxis paid with cash is still my first preference.

Can you get a taxi to show up? The last two times I tried to rebel against the rideshare duopoly was the morning before international flights. Trips to the airport are the only use case I have for rideshare. Both times I scheduled the pick up by calling the phone number the day before, both times the driver just… didn’t show up. I panicked and downloaded Lyft. I know some taxi companies have apps now, but if I’m goin…

Sadly they have been squeezed out of many locations, and I can not always find one. I know where I can usually get them and try it as my first option. It depends on where you are.
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