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This is not about taking on Uber. Google is testing AI for self driving cars. Once we have self driving cars, the idea is that you deploy these cars and the

This is not about taking on Uber. Google is testing AI for self driving cars. Once we have self driving cars, the idea is that you deploy these cars and the cars figure out who to pick up and who to drop off and possible doing group pick ups along the way. Waze is going to predict who to pick up based on their collected data thus far using ML, their data scientists are going to supervise it and correct it. Once we have self driving cars, Google will have the tech that can manage assigning cars and picking people up. This is what it is all about.

shinamee 10y ago
Exactly what I thought myself after reading the article, it is totally logical (business-wise) to have an established market they can easily capture once their cars gets rolling.
wpietri 10y ago
You don't think that's exactly the market Uber has been going for? There's a reason Uber raided CMU for researchers: http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-mellon-in-robotics-1433084582 http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carne... And that reason became pretty obvious when they started testing self-driving cars recently in Pittsburgh: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-in-pittsburgh-whats-happening-and-what-it-means/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-i... I don't think Uber started out with this plan, but clearly at some point they realized that they had to be a two-stage company like Netflix. Google's doing the same thing, but with a different stage 1. My bet, though, is that Uber wants to own the market, while Google is going to go after a platform play. I expect it to be sort of like Android. Google will make the software and own important parts of the consumer relationship. But most people who can manufacture cars or otherwise acquire large fleets at low costs will not want to do the software work, so they'll partner with Google. So yes, in the same way that Android was about taking on Apple in a way that makes decent money and keep Google from getting cut out of an important piece of the tech/human intersection, this is ultimately about taking on Uber.

shinamee 10y ago

Exactly what I thought myself after reading the article, it is totally logical (business-wise) to have an established market they can easily capture once their cars gets rolling.

wpietri 10y ago

You don't think that's exactly the market Uber has been going for? There's a reason Uber raided CMU for researchers: http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-mellon-in-robotics-1433084582 http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carne... And that reason became pretty obvious when they started testing self-driving cars recently in Pittsburgh: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-in-pittsburgh-whats-happening-and-what-it-means/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-i... I don't think Uber started out with this plan, but clearly at some point they realized that they had to be a two-stage company like Netflix. Google's doing the same thing, but with a different stage 1. My bet, though, is that Uber wants to own the market, while Google is going to go after a platform play. I expect it to be sort of like Android. Google will make the software and own important parts of the consumer relationship. But most people who can manufacture cars or otherwise acquire large fleets at low costs will not want to do the software work, so they'll partner with Google. So yes, in the same way that Android was about taking on Apple in a way that makes decent money and keep Google from getting cut out of an important piece of the tech/human intersection, this is ultimately about taking on Uber.