5 ms·

I think you answered your own question: if they are confident of Waymo As I said a couple months ago, the "Waymo" name is a sign. If they really believed in t

• nitsky 6y ago
  Lots of conglomerates have sub brands to avoid antitrust attention. Also maybe they don’t want consumers to think the cars are watching them.
  • Isamu 6y ago
    “We will drive you to your requested shopping destination after this brief targeted advertisement for laundry detergent.”
    • galuggus 6y ago
      Or the car will take a detour past certain billboards
      • ori_b 6y ago
        Too crass. The billboards will display video ads optimized for the occupants passing by.
    • mav3rick 6y ago
      Hyperbole clearly. Feel free to not use the taxi if you care. But of course you'd want to rant on HN
• mtmail 6y ago
  Different brands can make sense though. Youtube isn't called Google Video and Blogger isn't Google Blogs.
  • gruturo 6y ago
    Google Video was an actual product, competing with Youtube. When they decided to acquire the much more successful Youtube, its brand already had a lot of value and recognition, so it survived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video
    • tyingq 6y ago
      Similar, on a smaller scale, for Blogger. Google acquired it.
      • buttersbrian 6y ago
        Yet they applied the google name to nest? Android remains without a google moniker (other issues there). Point being that google has quite a few inconsistencies in their naming (which is a thing in itself) and their not applying Google brand to Waymo at this point is any indication.
        • throwaway2048 6y ago
          Android was also acquired.
  • chubot 6y ago
    Google Video existed and was shut down after Google acquired YouTube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video Blogger was also an acquisition (from the future founder of Twitter), and it already had a strong brand. Whereas in 2011 there was a lot of marketing tying self-driving cars <=> Google. There could be other reasons for the separate brand, like managing bad PR from a crash, but I would also classify that under "don't have confidence". In contrast Tesla seems to be staking their brand on self-driving. I feel like this could backfire in the next 5-10 years, but Elon will probably make some other advance/launch to distract from that. Self-driving has already fallen behind Tesla's claims, but he can keep the media busy enough with other stories.
• Guest0918231 6y ago
  People are going to die in Waymo cars, and sometimes we'll wonder if the accident was avoidable and if the car made the wrong choice leading to someone's death. It'll look bad on the brand when the news is reporting how, "Google self-driving car kills family en route to Disneyland". I'm not saying self-driving cars are dangerous, but it's just the numbers. People will die and self-driving car deaths will be shocking news and make headlines for a long time. I wouldn't want my brand name anywhere near them.
  • tialaramex 6y ago
    Sure, just look at Rolls Royce. A related company with that brand name makes jet engines, which of course are thus involved in tragic and headline-making air accidents. As a result Rolls Royce cars are... huh, no, people actually nod right along, that makes sense, Rolls Royce jet engines, I would want a reliable, high quality jet engine and that's what I associate with this car brand. Most people have no idea it isn't even the same company. News outlets will connect Google to such deaths regardless. "Google car kills two" the headline will say, and Google's PR person will know better than to insist "Actually it should say Waymo not Google". It looks bad if it becomes a trend. "Man dies in car crash" isn't going to destroy your brand. Ask every single car company in the world. Even Volvo, whose brand is specifically all about safety. It requires a trend, which is what hurt Boeing recently, bad news after bad news without respite, that'll do it. But there's no reason to think Waymo will ship something dangerous enough to cause such a trend.
    • Guest0918231 6y ago
      I don't think it's a fair comparison. There's a difference between someone crashing their own Volvo, and someone sitting in the backseat of a Waymo that misinterprets the lane markers and crashes into a barrier. One is not news, one is front page news. I guarantee the first Waymo death is going to be publicized everywhere. It doesn't need to be a trend, and as I said, it doesn't mean the cars are more dangerous than human drivers. However, it's going to be news. There are going to be all sorts of moral debates when an algorithm decides to drive over a child instead of turning into an oncoming car. People will want answers. How does Waymo rank the value of different lives? I imagine it'll be news for the next decade until there are thousands of deaths and it becomes normal. It's an industry that's going to be full of "firsts" and that's going to be the news. Waymo drives over dog while auto-piloting to a parking lot. Waymo mistakes grocery cart for stroller and swerves into elderly man. Waymo kills cyclist when poor weather disrupts censors. It doesn't matter if they ship something safe. Get enough cars on the road and these things will happen and people will be talking about it.
• eigenvalue 6y ago
  Even if you thought Waymo technology was amazing and would be a huge success, there is a non-trivial risk that a self-driving car could kill people and turn into a PR nightmare. Thus it's totally reasonable that Google would want to insulate themselves against that risk considering that they own one of the world's most valuable brands in their search business. Also, it might make sense to have a real privacy wall between Google and a potential fleet of millions of cars outfitted with multiple cameras and sensors. The only way to do that effectively is to have a separate company do it.