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Can't tell if MegaButts (parent comment) is being facetious, but to answer: No, it's very unlikely that Ruth would sell off Waymo. The company is at the forefro

Can't tell if MegaButts (parent comment) is being facetious, but to answer: No, it's very unlikely that Ruth would sell off Waymo. The company is at the forefront when compared on actual technical merit. They've got the lowest manual-intervention-to-mile ratio. They have the largest dataset. The largest simulation capacity. The biggest company in backing $. Its technology has the most revenue to date: 500M ;) Why would Waymo pack up shop and leave? Does Google expect that Nissan will just come in and clean up demand the leftover self driving market? Why would a company at the forefront of technical achievement decide to exit a market that we know will dominate a huge amount of the world economy? One that may un-employ 3% of all Americans in the first few years.

fwip 7y ago
If they do exit, it's because they don't believe that self-driving cars will be feasible any time soon.
mrep 7y ago
Yeah, there's no way they would cancel it. They're 3.5 million truck drivers in the US alone and they each make on average 55,000. That's a 192 billion dollar market per year just considering truck drivers in the US. That market is insanely high when you factor in other countries and commuters. I expect it to surpasses every other market in profitability. They would be crazy to cancel it.
KKKKkkkk1 7y ago
Hypothetical explanation: Ruth Porat would want to sell Waymo because she knows on the one hand that they've not been able to remove human drivers in their service in Phoenix, and so they have no path to profitability, and on the other hand, that there's plenty of speculative investors who are willing to pay top dollar for a self-driving technology even if it requires a human minder.
zaarn 7y ago
Nobody expects their favorite Google service to be shut down but it always happens. It's inevitable. Recent examples: Google Hangsouts (plus Hangouts on Air) are being killed off despite quite a few people using it for podcasts. GCM was killed last month and destroyed my ability to receive notifications for a few FOSS apps I use until people switch. Google+ was killed despite an active community after Google forgot to patch glaring security holes for years. goo.gl was killed despite thousands of customers. YT Video Annotations. More and more. Waymo might be killed of once they inevitably drive over a living person by accident. Or because they miss another target. Or maybe because Alphabet's CEO didn't have a good coffee today.
IshKebab 7y ago
Waymo doesn't have any revenue as far as I know, let alone $500m!
MegaButts 7y ago
What is your source for Waymo having hundreds of millions in revenue? I'd be surprised if they've even hit hundreds of thousands at this point, considering how small their trucking operation is and how few people are part of their always-in-beta pilot in Phoenix. The reason Waymo would be cancelled is simple: self-driving cars are far from a reality. Why would you continue to spend billions of dollars developing something once you realize you have no idea how to develop it? Obviously if they can make self-driving cars they will make a shitload of money. But why do you assume they can do that when they've missed their public milestones (not to mention their internal milestones), almost the entire original team has left, many of those original team members including the former lead are publicly saying the technology is decades away, and if you talk to anybody in the industry that's worked on it for more than a year they'll tell you it's all demoware?
- nostrademons 7y ago
  > The reason Waymo would be cancelled is simple: self-driving cars are far from a reality. Everybody always says this unless they live in the Bay Area or Phoenix. I see multiple self-driving cars per day, sometimes a couple waiting for each other at the same intersection. Self-driving cars have been a reality for me since 2013. The future's here, it's just unevenly distributed.
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    I live in the Bay Area. All those cars you're talking about are actually piloted by humans, and drive a hell of a lot worse than your regular Uber driver. They slam on the brakes randomly and get stuck at intersections all the time. Where are the driverless vehicles? If the technology has really been a reality since 2013 like you said, why is it still unavailable to the public 6 years later even after Waymo themselves said it would be ready last year and nothing happened? They still haven't let the public see the tech this many years later, still force reporters to sign NDAs and won't even allow them to choose their own routes, still have the vast majority of their hand-picked Early Riders who had to apply for the privilege bound by an NDA. Have you been in one of those cars?
jerf 7y ago
I feel like you're conflating selling Waymo with shutting it down. Shutting it down would be an unnecessary waste, but for the right price, selling it can make perfect sense, if for no other reason than to allow the core organization to focus better. It's very easy to imagine a world in which Waymo becomes too large for "Google"/Alphabet to deal with without it being a massive distraction to everything else. The company I work for has sold and spun off product lines that were nominally profitable, but still not profitable enough to justify the distractions they caused relative to our other opportunities. Even if they don't sell it, I'd fully expect them to get spun off before they take over the market. At some point, just organizationally, they're going to need to be their own company not subject to conflicting priorities from a parent organization.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >if for no other reason than to allow the core organization to focus better. The core organization doesn't want to focus better, if they did they would shut down every subsidiary that wasn't Google. Instead they're maintaining all of these bets because they realize that Google is about as big as it's going to get, and they need to go to the stock market with a long-term plan that isn't just stagnation.
  - jerf 7y ago
    If the research organization grows one division that is 95% of the research division due to its success (made up number, not claiming that's where Waymo is), some kind of restructuring will be necessary or the research division won't be a research division anymore.
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      They already did that with the Alphabet restructuring and spinning Waymo out from Google X into a top-level Alphabet company. Alphabet is a technology conglomerate and doesn't pretend to be anything else. They're like GE or Berkshire Hathaway. There's no issue with GE making washing machines at the same time they make jet engines and nuclear reactors, or with Berkshire Hathaway providing insurance, rail freight, and chocolates. Similarly, there's no issue with Waymo and Google both being subsidiaries of Alphabet.

fwip 7y ago

If they do exit, it's because they don't believe that self-driving cars will be feasible any time soon.

mrep 7y ago

Yeah, there's no way they would cancel it. They're 3.5 million truck drivers in the US alone and they each make on average 55,000. That's a 192 billion dollar market per year just considering truck drivers in the US. That market is insanely high when you factor in other countries and commuters. I expect it to surpasses every other market in profitability. They would be crazy to cancel it.

KKKKkkkk1 7y ago

Hypothetical explanation: Ruth Porat would want to sell Waymo because she knows on the one hand that they've not been able to remove human drivers in their service in Phoenix, and so they have no path to profitability, and on the other hand, that there's plenty of speculative investors who are willing to pay top dollar for a self-driving technology even if it requires a human minder.

zaarn 7y ago

Nobody expects their favorite Google service to be shut down but it always happens. It's inevitable. Recent examples: Google Hangsouts (plus Hangouts on Air) are being killed off despite quite a few people using it for podcasts. GCM was killed last month and destroyed my ability to receive notifications for a few FOSS apps I use until people switch. Google+ was killed despite an active community after Google forgot to patch glaring security holes for years. goo.gl was killed despite thousands of customers. YT Video Annotations. More and more. Waymo might be killed of once they inevitably drive over a living person by accident. Or because they miss another target. Or maybe because Alphabet's CEO didn't have a good coffee today.

IshKebab 7y ago

Waymo doesn't have any revenue as far as I know, let alone $500m!

MegaButts 7y ago

What is your source for Waymo having hundreds of millions in revenue? I'd be surprised if they've even hit hundreds of thousands at this point, considering how small their trucking operation is and how few people are part of their always-in-beta pilot in Phoenix. The reason Waymo would be cancelled is simple: self-driving cars are far from a reality. Why would you continue to spend billions of dollars developing something once you realize you have no idea how to develop it? Obviously if they can make self-driving cars they will make a shitload of money. But why do you assume they can do that when they've missed their public milestones (not to mention their internal milestones), almost the entire original team has left, many of those original team members including the former lead are publicly saying the technology is decades away, and if you talk to anybody in the industry that's worked on it for more than a year they'll tell you it's all demoware?

nostrademons 7y ago
> The reason Waymo would be cancelled is simple: self-driving cars are far from a reality. Everybody always says this unless they live in the Bay Area or Phoenix. I see multiple self-driving cars per day, sometimes a couple waiting for each other at the same intersection. Self-driving cars have been a reality for me since 2013. The future's here, it's just unevenly distributed.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  I live in the Bay Area. All those cars you're talking about are actually piloted by humans, and drive a hell of a lot worse than your regular Uber driver. They slam on the brakes randomly and get stuck at intersections all the time. Where are the driverless vehicles? If the technology has really been a reality since 2013 like you said, why is it still unavailable to the public 6 years later even after Waymo themselves said it would be ready last year and nothing happened? They still haven't let the public see the tech this many years later, still force reporters to sign NDAs and won't even allow them to choose their own routes, still have the vast majority of their hand-picked Early Riders who had to apply for the privilege bound by an NDA. Have you been in one of those cars?

jerf 7y ago

I feel like you're conflating selling Waymo with shutting it down. Shutting it down would be an unnecessary waste, but for the right price, selling it can make perfect sense, if for no other reason than to allow the core organization to focus better. It's very easy to imagine a world in which Waymo becomes too large for "Google"/Alphabet to deal with without it being a massive distraction to everything else. The company I work for has sold and spun off product lines that were nominally profitable, but still not profitable enough to justify the distractions they caused relative to our other opportunities. Even if they don't sell it, I'd fully expect them to get spun off before they take over the market. At some point, just organizationally, they're going to need to be their own company not subject to conflicting priorities from a parent organization.

whatshisface 7y ago
>if for no other reason than to allow the core organization to focus better. The core organization doesn't want to focus better, if they did they would shut down every subsidiary that wasn't Google. Instead they're maintaining all of these bets because they realize that Google is about as big as it's going to get, and they need to go to the stock market with a long-term plan that isn't just stagnation.
- jerf 7y ago
  If the research organization grows one division that is 95% of the research division due to its success (made up number, not claiming that's where Waymo is), some kind of restructuring will be necessary or the research division won't be a research division anymore.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    They already did that with the Alphabet restructuring and spinning Waymo out from Google X into a top-level Alphabet company. Alphabet is a technology conglomerate and doesn't pretend to be anything else. They're like GE or Berkshire Hathaway. There's no issue with GE making washing machines at the same time they make jet engines and nuclear reactors, or with Berkshire Hathaway providing insurance, rail freight, and chocolates. Similarly, there's no issue with Waymo and Google both being subsidiaries of Alphabet.