Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by bartwr » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

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.

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 in general, and autonomous vehicles) onto an entity which is already "hated".

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

#52

Post by sschueller » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #43

This doesn't really make sense to me. What does Waymo get out of this? It seems to me like if the value proposition in self driving is there (privacy, consistency, etc), people would be willing to download another app? Especially once word of mouth goes through. Plus currently the Waymo app has neat features (when the car is on its way to you, it shows you stuff like when it's stopped at a red light or whatever) that…

What people don't realize is that full autonomous does not work 100%. There are always people watching and taking over if something goes a foul.

I can see Uber drivers sitting in front of computers taking over from the autonomous system to provide a pseudo autonomous experience.

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

#53

Post by yard2010 » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #24

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…

To me, the HTR (hard to replicate) tech is FSD. Google could bang out a ride booking app in a weekend.

They couldn't bang out a social network over the last decade(s), I hardly believe they could bang out anything than keep extracting more money from the dying ad industry

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

#54

Post by Mistletoe » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

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…

> Alphabet just swoops in and buys up Uber

Please no. We don’t need the ultimate “startup that was unprofitable and never could be profitable that was just trying to get bought by big tech” example to fuel more nonsense.

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

#55

Post by usrusr » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #31

osigurdson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the HTR (hard to replicate) tech is FSD. Google could bang out a ride booking app in a weekend.

Or multiple on various places. Google Rides, Google Play Hail, Youtube Taxi and so on...

And a betting platform about shutdown order?

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

#56

Post by shagie » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

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.

... and as soon as it started losing money Google could cancel it (Uber has never made a profit - https://fourweekmba.com/is-uber-profitable/ ).

... and the government would (again) look into Google using anticompetitive tools to expand its market reach and stifle other companies in the area.

... having a "use Google/Waymo ride hailing" only in a few cities would lose a significant part of the network effect that Uber has (you can likely use Uber in any city - not just a limited few).

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

#57

Post by vasilipupkin » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#58

Post by wartijn_ » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#59

Post by mdale » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

Google owns a bit over 5% of Uber at 70B and a very high percentage of waymo at 30B evaluation. (last measured) so incentive is for Waymo to succeed / grow.

It seems counter intuitive to me that they do a strategic partnership with Uber given low switching cost of using another app if it had meaningful cost benefits to the consumer. Additional Google owns the Android platform so could leverage that to it's advantages as well.

But Uber is already in a world of low margins marketplace matching. The deal is likely highly favorable to Google in that it need only compete with the the humans so can start to recover some of it's investment without having to directly compete on a platform basis which would be expensive per city high density rollout.

Google won't have the same driver density as Uber for a long time and for an app to be your go to ride system it had to always be fast to get a ride.

For high utilization on Google side also benefits being part of Uber platform of on tap riders.

All said, the existence of Lyft and numerous other transportation apps globally impacts the value Uber can extract. More autonomous vehicles will quickly follow Waymo and an integrated network will dominate at some point. Just like Amazon using its own delivery infra once it reached a certain scale.

I don't see this being a long term relationship. Once a given density is reached Google can leverage Android / Google maps / cost competition to push people over and why would Google / Waymo continue to pay Uber market place margin on "it's phone platform". Google will be leveraging said platform to compete with integrated networks like Tesla, Amazon zoomx, cruise, wherever apple lands and others globally.

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

#60

Post by jonas21 » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #17

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…

> The first question I had though was "who extracts value here". Uber can't be profitable without autonomous vehicles, so the answer IMHO here is simple. For Alphabet, the answer is similarly simple - they'll partner with literally anyone to get distribution.

You say the answer is simple, but I can't tell what your answer is.

The first half of your comment implies that Uber has a really bad negotiating position, so Waymo must be extracting most of the value.

The second half says that Alphabet (the majority owner of Waymo) will "partner with literally anyone" which would presumably mean Uber is extracting most of the value.

So which is it?