271–280 of 399 posts
Amazing that they can both get past the 245 million dollar lawsuit settlement over IP and trade secret theft.
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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).
Google is so much more integrated in to people's lives than 15+ years ago. Google Maps + Waymo or "Google Taxi" would have millions of customers immediately.
What Google did to Yelp is what might happen to Uber. I think the main point thing stopping is what others have pointed out. Is it worth the reputation? Instead of running their own service just take a nice cut from Uber and let them deal with bad headlines. Especially when the headlines will read Uber "fires" poor single parent uber drivers in favor of robot cars.
For Uber, it's all about maintaining the stock price.
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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.
Yes, Google can copy Uber, but can they make it successful? Uber has a lot of users and drivers, and Google has to convince them to use their app instead of Uber or one of the other existing apps in this space. Getting into a new market didn’t work for videos so they bought YouTube, it didn’t work for their social network, and it didn’t work for a ton of other cancelled projects.
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>Google could bang out a ride booking app in a weekend. Google's culture isn't really built around providing human support to users. I believe there is also lots of onboarding involved for restaurants so Google may struggle there. With that said, I am constantly hit up by outsourced Google reps for Adwords + Firebase but I think the average customer has a much higher transaction volume with much better margins than a…
To be fair, I don't think Uber has a lot of human to customer interaction either.
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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)
People in America mostly view cars as a status symbol and a part of their identity, which is why everyone buys giant trucks and SUVs. Why would a better taxi change that? Only "the poors" use taxis
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Automotive EE here, I could not disagree with you more on the state and expectations of self-driving vehicles. I can tell you with confidence they have not really put effort into weather and it’s a problem “to be solved later”. It’s all a joke. If we actually wanted this, it would be long haul A to B routes. Turning semi trucks into rail. Self-driving was already slowing down before the era of free money. So I expect…
"I can tell you with confidence they have not really put effort into weather" Ah, the Internet, where people who know absolutely nothing about a topic make bold assertions about it with 100% confidence. https://blog.waymo.com/2022/11/using-cutting-edge-weather-re...
I’ve been in at least four fully self-driving dev / S0 / drivable buck vehicles and they are absolute garbage imo. We had one planned demo that was delayed because of fog in 2020, not road fog, but crap on the LiDAR glass. How many have you directly worked with?
You’ll be happy to know it isn’t just weather that makes this all fake though.
Road crown, even minor, but especially major in the northwest. Reflections, refractions. Lights and electronic billboards. Potholes. Missing road paint. ANY sort of road work at all. “Unhomed” people washing windshields. Squirrels (day) and mice/rats (night). Other bad drivers. Just plain dirty vehicles, self and others. Dust.
It’s all garbage. If we were serious it would be long haul, V2V V2I (vehicle to infra/vehicle). But yea yea, Waygo says they solved weather so just post their claim and you win! Reality can’t compete with marketing, except it always does.
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i think the main goal of licencing would be less capital costs. buying cars isn't cheap, especially not at scale - licencing their tech to somebody else means every car they put on the road is $150k waymo doesn't have to spend.
Someone has to spend it, though. Uber seem in even less of a position to be footing that bill.
With the Uber app, Uber will show both options when they're both available. It allows waymo to offer a lower SLA/SLO while still gradually fielding a service. It also allows for easier fallback if a waymo vehicle is taking too long to arrive.