> Implementing features based on feedback from 1 customer, then find out the customer wasn't articulating the problem at all. What about, ahem, Google Self-Dri

> Implementing features based on feedback from 1 customer, then find out the customer wasn't articulating the problem at all. What about, ahem, Google Self-Driving Cars :)? Unpopular opinion around here but here goes: I feel the dimensions on which actual people (i.e. customers) will evaluate Google's SDCs, when they become generally available, is very different from the dimensions Google is optimizing for, based on what they think people will need in the future once the technology is ready§. How a person determines the utility of a product or service can be markedly different from how the same person evaluates the utility of that product or service when s/he is confronted with what all potential customers must confront before making a purchase decision: a price tag. As subtle as the distinction between a person and a customer is, it is an important dose of reality that I think is missing from a lot of arguments that happen here on HN where the title of market leader is undisputedly ceded to Google Waymo when compared to a competitor like Tesla with far far lower-tech (but cheaper) autonomous capabilities. § IMHO, I don’t think their current approach to SDC technology using expensive LIDARs fits the problem at hand. Use of high fidelity tech like LIDAR also causes another tendency, it lures engineers into thinking that it will somehow make tractable, a hard problem like the trolley problem [0]. An additional issue is that the designations: L0-L5 are arbitrary constraints themselves, they are not based on problems customers are confronted with. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem