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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

#231

Post by gnicholas »

panarky wrote: post #218
gnicholas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has tons of legal resources for their current business. But that doesn’t mean they can spin up the legal docs and relationships needed to run an Uber-like business at the drop of a hat. The type of risk that Google’s lawyers are used to mitigating are simply not the same, and their lawyers are for the most part not the type of lawyers that you’d want to set up a transportation company with international operat…

Google's missing piece isn't the app. And it isn't the lawyers. It's the network of riders. Waymo promised to 10x their scale this year. Waymo could saturate the territory with empty vehicles waiting for riders on the Waymo app, or it can tap into a fraction of Uber's volume.

As others have pointed out, Google could scoop up tons of riders in a heartbeat, by announcing a ride share platform publicly (which would get tons of news coverage) and by advertising the feature within Google Maps, Waze, etc.

Google only needs to put together a one-sided marketplace, where Uber/Lyft had to build a two-sided marketplace. And Google already has a connection to billions (at least hundreds of millions) of potential riders.

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

#232

Post by lhorie »

id00 wrote: post #193
ra7 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The backstory that seems to have been forgotten here is that self driving cars are still a money bleeding endeavor. It's why Uber sold its own self driving division and it's something Cruise has said in the past still needs to be figured out. Uber sold their self driving division because they killed someone in Arizona due to negligence. And then Anthony Lewandowski happened. Those two incidents complete deflated Ub…

I think the more likely here is that Uber sold self-driving group (alongside other "big bets" like flying taxi research group) because of existential threat to the business during the start of COVID-19 which made them focusing on the main business (+eats) and sell parts that have no profitability in sight.

That's exactly right. Uber self driving was burning through the tune of billions of dollars a year when covid reduced revenue by the tune of 70%. Not exactly sustainable w/ only a few billion dollars of cash on hand.

As terrible as a pedestrian death is, the reality is there's news about Tesla accidents and near-accidents on the news all the time and people still love the brand. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Uber/Amazon/M$/etc hating is not as widespread in the general population as it is among tech bros.

As for Otto, my understanding is Uber pivoted similarly on the freight side, with a partnership w/ Volvo Autonomous Solutions.

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

#233

Post by temporalparts »

makestuff wrote: post #38
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…

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.

That's what they thought about Google Video, but then Google decided to buy Youtube. Technical advantage (which Google has in strides) does not always translate to business advantage (which Uber has done remarkably well for itself).

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

#234

Post by vizzah »

panarky wrote: post #218
gnicholas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has tons of legal resources for their current business. But that doesn’t mean they can spin up the legal docs and relationships needed to run an Uber-like business at the drop of a hat. The type of risk that Google’s lawyers are used to mitigating are simply not the same, and their lawyers are for the most part not the type of lawyers that you’d want to set up a transportation company with international operat…

Google's missing piece isn't the app. And it isn't the lawyers. It's the network of riders. Waymo promised to 10x their scale this year. Waymo could saturate the territory with empty vehicles waiting for riders on the Waymo app, or it can tap into a fraction of Uber's volume.

the hype of driverless taxis will explode a new app's customer base immediately. no need to tap in into the existing ecosystem.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

riskable wrote: post #131
bartwr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is nonsense. Google has more than enough legal resources to handle this. So much so that it would be nothing more than a regular 3-6 month project that would be assigned a small team of lawy…

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by afavour »

temporalparts wrote: post #233
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.

That's what they thought about Google Video, but then Google decided to buy Youtube. Technical advantage (which Google has in strides) does not always translate to business advantage (which Uber has done remarkably well for itself).

I think you’re right here. You can recreate the technical aspects of YouTube relatively easily. You can’t recreate the brand.

Just because it’s big doesn’t mean Google will inevitably succeed. Look at Google+, Allo, Duo etc etc. to my mind there’s no guarantee a Google rideshare app would capture mindshare.

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

#237

Post by morelisp »

panarky wrote: post #207
xyst wrote: post #198

Yea let’s just kick people to the streets and let the “autonomous drivers” take over. Any “value” spent on humans is then gobbled up by a mega corporation. The ultra wealthy get wealthier. Will anybody please think of the shareholders!!!!1 The optics on this are totally not absolute dog shit.

Yea let's just keep workers in such a precarious state that they not only must sell their labor for pennies, but incredibly they must now supply the capital to the corporation, all to do a job that isn't even necessary for a human to do, is hazardous for the worker and the public, and generates tremendous amounts of pollution. Why the "optics" aren't already absolute dog shit is left as an exercise for the reader.

Now we will generate the pollution without having to pay anyone anything! Progress!

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

#238

Post by pfannkuchen »

panarky wrote: post #218
gnicholas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has tons of legal resources for their current business. But that doesn’t mean they can spin up the legal docs and relationships needed to run an Uber-like business at the drop of a hat. The type of risk that Google’s lawyers are used to mitigating are simply not the same, and their lawyers are for the most part not the type of lawyers that you’d want to set up a transportation company with international operat…

Google's missing piece isn't the app. And it isn't the lawyers. It's the network of riders. Waymo promised to 10x their scale this year. Waymo could saturate the territory with empty vehicles waiting for riders on the Waymo app, or it can tap into a fraction of Uber's volume.

I don’t think people’s brand loyalty for Uber is very high these days, is it?

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

#239

Post by ghaff »

dweekly wrote: post #156
mcny wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not just OKRs. That $75m/year consumes attention all up and down and across Google. Lots of things that are slam dunks at a small or medium company are just more trouble than they're worth at most really large firms.
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