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read: "Google ride-share is to Uber as Windows Phone is to Android". Late to the party, tragically deficient in first-mover network effect advantage, and on the
by vegabook 10y ago
read: "Google ride-share is to Uber as Windows Phone is to Android". Late to the party, tragically deficient in first-mover network effect advantage, and on the decline in credibility since they're shutting down all moonshots, including, as we saw as recently as today, halving the staff at Google Fibre.
Talk about panic catch-up with no intrinsic advantage, nor vision. "Mountain View, start your photo-copiers". We know where that ends...
Larry and Sergei have shown in the past 3 years that they have no staying power on anything that isn't an obvious profit lay-up in short order. This thing will burn through cash at a rate that will make any of their other ill-fated ventures look like a bargain. I mean, UBER has already coughed 1.2 yards this year!
Smells like Google+ all over again. Isn't this the sort of sham that the Alphabet carve-out was supposed to avoid?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- useful_intern 10y agoThey do have access to Google Maps data which provides sizable competitive edge
- vegabook 10y agoIf it we were in 2012 that would be true. There are multiple competing mapping suppliers now which are perfectly good enough for taxi navigation, including Uber's own system, not forgetting Tomtom's third party stuff, AAPL's heavy investment, etc. This looks like too little too late.
- jonknee 10y agoAnd yet Uber still uses Google Maps.
- nikkun 10y agoIn every Uber ride I've been in recently, my driver's used Waze for navigation.
- schwap 10y agoWhich is owned by Google.
- dragonwriter 10y agoWaze has been owned by Google and shared data -- both mapping and traffic, etc. -- with Google Maps for years. Using Waze, in a very real sense, is using Google Maps, and vice versa. Heck, the new Google service at issue in this thread is Waze Carpool.
- amyjess 10y agoWaze does not use the same data as Google Maps. Google Maps always gives perfectly-accurate directions to where I live. Waze does not give accurate directions to where I live. It goes out of its way to force drivers to enter a gated community that's adjacent to my complex. What's even worse is that the entrance to my complex and the entrance to that gated community are on separate arterials [0], and if you try to enter my complex through the main entrance, Waze will instruct you to make a U-turn out of my complex and go into the gated community. Google Maps does not do that. As such, I text every driver picking me up at my place to tell them to use Google and only Google and to not use Waze (and I tell the name of the street they need to enter my complex from). I watch them on the map, and if I see that they have disregarded my message and do things that only Waze would instruct them to do (like pass by the entrance to my complex, and/or turn onto the arterial the gated community is on), I cancel the ride and call another. [0] Here's a map, just to show you how terrible Waze is: ROAD A | ---|--------------------------- | ...G......... | R | . GATED . | R O | . COMMUNITY . | O A | . .................| A D | . . MY .| D | . G COMPLEX .| D | ..... =| B | . .| | ..||.............| ---|--------------------------- ROAD C | Without fail, no matter what direction you are coming from, Waze will insist you turn onto Road A and go through the gated community. Google actually knows that the main entrance to my complex is on Road A (and sometimes, on rare occasion, it'll pick up the side entrance on Road C, but I don't count on it) So if I see a Lyft or Uber driver, after I text them telling them both not to use Waze and to only enter my complex from Road B, a) pass by the entrance on Road B when driving northbound on Road B, b) turn right on Road A when driving southbound on Road B, c) fail to turn left on Road B when driving westbound on Road A, or d) turn left on Road D when driving eastbound on Road C, I just cancel on them and request another driver.
- praveenster 10y agoI believe it doesn't. They acquired some assets from Microsoft Bing maps team: https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/uber-acquires-part-of-bings-mapping-assets-will-absorb-around-100-microsoft-employees/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/uber-acquires-part-of-bing...
- wtvanhest 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Treo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Treo was way before Andriod. First mover advantage is rarely an advantage at all. My guess is that google sees this as optionality and testing to get things right like insurance etc. in anticipation of self driving cars. At the very least it allows them to extract more value from Uber when Google finally have self driving cars ready to sell them. I really don't see how Uber is worth more than a few billion in a few years. Google is playing the long game hard and I think they are going to win here.
- vegabook 10y agoMakes sense. But they've shown no staying power in any of their other long term initiatives. Google Fibre (halving staff). Self driving car (looking for investors/partners). Robotics (disinvesting). Google+ (firing the boss after 2 years). Glass (debacle buried under the carpet). Motorola (flipped for a few billion pronto and now struggling). Shopping (trounced by Amazon). Cloud? (for second place, Microsoft Azure is ripping them a new one). Music/Video premium services? (spare me as my eyes roll towards anybody else). And they're now miraculously going to do Uber? Which requires enormous long term financial commitment? With the above record? Unlikely. This company knows how to do ads, and that's it. It fails at everything else.
- euyyn 10y ago> they've shown no staying power in any of their other long term initiatives You actually can't find even one? :)
- vegabook 10y agoI'm getting obliterated by the google-salaried herd. Anybody out there (preferably not Google employed or Google-surrogate) care to give me an upvote? :-) Or at least tell me where I'm wrong!
- htaunay 10y agoWhy is this being downvoted? Honest question. After Glass, G+, Fiber and possibly Boston Dynamics, I'm failing to see any moonshots living up to the hype as well. At least up until now.
- chc 10y agoProbably because it's a middlebrow dismissal that's barely even middlebrow.
- htaunay 10y agoOk, makes sense. I got the point, and just focused on it, but I agree it could have been better written.
- vegabook 10y agowell it doesn't get more "middle brow" than your vacuous meta non-comment. Actually the reality is that it's being downvoted because being anti-google is not a popular stance amongst the tech set, even if there is, as this poster seems to suggest, merit to the logic.
- schwap 10y agoWell sure it could turn out like Google+ vs Facebook or it could turn out like Google Maps vs Mapquest or Gmail vs Hotmail.
- fma 10y agoWhen I first used Google Maps and Gmail, I knew that it was far superior than the others. The only thing I liked about Google+ was the group hangouts..but nothing else. MapQuest, Hotmail never innovated until it was too late.
- nattaylor 10y agoI hesitate to predict how it will play out, but the article reports "the company has said it aims to make fares low enough to discourage drivers from operating as taxi drivers," which seems fundamentally different.