They have plenty of competition though - if Waymo is operating a taxi service, they are explicitly competing with Uber/Lyft/traditional taxis/bikes/buses/all th

They have plenty of competition though - if Waymo is operating a taxi service, they are explicitly competing with Uber/Lyft/traditional taxis/bikes/buses/all the other ways to move around - generally pretty low-margin businesses where their competitors set a pretty strict ceiling on the price you can charge (who would pay a lot more for a waymo ride vs a competitor? maybe some, but not many). Waymo would have high capital costs for the cars, plus still need centralized service infrastructure (re-fueling, re-charging, who cleans a waymo when a drunk person throws up in it?). It would also still have the same problem other companies have - lots of people might want to travel to/from work, and on weekend evenings (or to big events), but not much the rest of the time. An uber vehicle might serve double duty as a personal vehicle during off-peak times (where the driver might even have a different job), but a waymo car needs to pay for itself, so it needs to be driving a lot. I could see them licensing their software to other companies like android auto or something, but that also doesn't seem like a way to print money (how much does android auto earn for google?). It just seems like a very hard business to transition from 'fun software project' to 'clearly profitable independent business.'