In terms of automated vehicles, I think Google is in the same place as Xerox was 40 years ago with the Xerox Alto. Like Xerox at that time, they have a busines

In terms of automated vehicles, I think Google is in the same place as Xerox was 40 years ago with the Xerox Alto. Like Xerox at that time, they have a business that is absurdly profitable that funds interesting research that is well ahead of its time, but there is little motivation to make something commercially viable. I haven't worked at google, but I image the employees are motivated to do things that make a huge splash, rather than build businesses incrementally, because any business they could build within Google would be completely dwarfed by ad revenue, much like 1973 PC business compared to the 1973 copying machine business. If google were really interested in automated vehicles, they would be selling radar assisted braking software, pedestrian alert systems, lane control systems, etc.