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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

#341

Post by zodzedzi »

kevinventullo wrote: post #327
zodzedzi wrote: post #316

Many comments saying Waymo could easily spin up an Uber-replacement app are missing one key point: integrating with Uber allows Waymo to have a slow rollout / soft-launch. They can start adding support one city at a time. And for the Uber user, the Waymo option only pops up for you if the ride you requested is within the Waymo range and they have cars available. This way they can also collect tons of data about how u…

I think my confusion is more about Uber’s incentives here. They’re providing a ramp-up platform for Waymo as you described, but as soon as it hits any scale Waymo can easily part ways.

Uber gets to introduce driverless cars finally (an old promise of theirs) without the costs of owning or developing hardware, and use that as leverage over drivers.

I don't think Uber has anything to fear from Waymo:

(1) It will take years for Waymo to ramp up to "independence" scale. How many cars do they have now, and how many would they need? How long will it take them to negotiate new regulations with every city and state? 5 years?

(2) This deal is probably not exclusive. Uber can strike a similar deal with Cruise as well. Uber becomes the Amazon of driving services, a platform gating access, with all the data.

(3) Having a big money company behind them is good. And if Waymo acquires Uber in 3 years, it's not necessarily a bad thing for Uber.

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

#343

Post by astrange »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #147
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But have they solved the Trolley Problem?

There's no need because 1. cars have brakes 2. programming this into a car would make it more dangerous, because it might decide to trolley-program-sacrifice a grandmother when nobody was actually in danger.

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

#345

Post by astrange »

snapcaster wrote: post #29
kornhole wrote: post #9

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

This doesn't work in my city, taxis will literally just not show up. I know that sounds weird but you'll call, request a time and place and then be at the time and place and... nothing

I switched to Uber because I got stuck at the Palo Alto Ikea for hours once because every taxi decided to go to a Stanford football game instead.

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

#347

Post by squokko »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #57
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…

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.

>give me 3 good software developers and I can give you an Uber app maybe in 3-6 months

LOLOLOL

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

#348

Post by bryanlarsen »

shagie wrote: post #295
bryanlarsen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinning up a messaging app without a compelling differentiation is hard. It's much easier with a compelling differentiation. Waymo could just set prices at half of Uber and boom instant market share.

Using Google's dominance to expand into other sectors (at a loss) is a perfect example of anticompetitive practices that regulators would likely take a keen interest in investigating.

Using robots to cut costs and thus prices is not anticompetitive.

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

#349

Post by bertil »

kortilla wrote: post #331
bertil wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the benefits from both for now, but I’m not capturing how they could agree on the long-term negotiation. There is so much upside in a few months for only one side of that deal… That was always the issue with Uber promising self-driving cars: human drivers have an unknown, uncontrollable deadline.

Are you sure Uber sees no viable replacement for Waymo?

They could buy a lot of Teslas or partner with a Waymo competitor, but I doubt anyone with a working automated fleet will need Uber’s human drivers. Acquiring riders is cheap—good PR, a handful of promo codes: branded cars all over the city will do the rest.

That partnership makes sense in the transition period when Waymo can’t buy enough cars to scale for football matches, handle edge cases, and build a larger fleet operation team. I think the individual Uber talent (operations, software, etc.) are great. Their experimentation team, for instance, is 100% something I’d recommend acquiring wholesale. Even with a thousand better options at Google, I’m sure their back-end solutions are work acqui-hiring. But Uber itself? The confusing everything app? It’s a bad brand whose toe-stepping values are misaligned with what anyone is trying to do (except maybe Tesla) and with a ton of tech debt. I know there was a lot of effort to escape it, but I don’t see great synergies. With Booking, maybe?

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

#350

Post by asadm »

jxramos wrote: post #334
kevinventullo wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my confusion is more about Uber’s incentives here. They’re providing a ramp-up platform for Waymo as you described, but as soon as it hits any scale Waymo can easily part ways.

maybe even buy Uber if possible

Is there any value there? Seems like baggage. Waymo doesn’t have a distribution problem.
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