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Waymo is far the best self driving tech and nobody has the money to buy it, as Alphabet is not selling (it's the first real diversification from ads revenue). G
by xiphias2 8y ago
Waymo is far the best self driving tech and nobody has the money to buy it, as Alphabet is not selling (it's the first real diversification from ads revenue). GM is few years behind, but hopefully those few years are not enough for Waymo to create a monopoly.
- jplayer01 8y agoGM really isn't far behind.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- blackoil 8y agoSelf Driving is not only a technical problem, it will be a people/marketing/legal/political problem. By the time these will be solved, GM/Tesla/Toyota should have competing solutions.
- uluyol 8y agoExactly. Non-Waymo companies have the benefit of Google/Waymo taking care of many of these obstacles for them.
- mikejb 8y agoBut they have the problem of getting solutions adapted to Waymo's strategy. They'll likely push for safety tests and requirements that they can pass; others will have to adapt to that.
- lossolo 8y ago> as Alphabet is not selling They will license/sell it eventually when/if they will get it to work. What else would they do with that tech ? Last time I've checked Alphabet did not produce any cars or had any infrastructure to do that on scale.
- dekhn 8y agoI think cloud is google's first real diversification from Ads. Nobody looks at Waymo as a revenue center.
- shimon 8y agoYou have too short a time horizon on your "nobody".
- erikpukinskis 8y agoWaymo is Google’s first AI robotics spinoff. That’s supposedly a (young) growth market.
- dekhn 8y agoSupposedly. I am skeptical that Waymo will ever execute a major deal. It's a real shame, the tech is really good, but Waymo just isn't very good at business (this is true about Alphabet in general; beyond ads, and maybe cloud).
- praneshp 8y agoXXX is not very good at business, except <several billion dollar product> and <several billion dollar product>.
- smt88 8y agoThey have tried and failed multiple dozen times to create new products. They're bad at business.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYou could say maybe they’re bad at startups but good at growing established products.
- hef19898 8y agoThere is truth to it. A friend of mine used the HUGE opportunity Alphabet os missing by failing to offer a service that allows to buy from vendors through Google only ising your Goovle account. Combine that with dropship and you have a potential Amazon-Killer in your pocket.
- gamblor956 8y agoHaving the best tech isn't a predictor of success. Just ask BetaMax and LaserDisk... What matters more is the business strategy, and articles like this are suggesting that Waymo's business plan will keep it from dominating the market. It turns out that trying to compete with your suppliers is very, very expensive, especially if you try to make them shoulder the risks without sharing the upsides. And very expensive business plans require very good execution, which Waymo hasn't managed so far. They've already been rejected by 3 automakers (Ford, GM, and Honda).
- heartbreak 8y agoThey don't need to be interested in selling off Waymo, because as we see in this very article they are interested in licensing Waymo tech to established players like Honda.
- givehimagun 8y agoFunny that Google did this very thing to become the search and advertising giant it is today.