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Quite so! I'm very excited to head on down to my Google dealership and pick one-- Oh. There's a huge difference between a research project and a shipping prod

Quite so! I'm very excited to head on down to my Google dealership and pick one-- Oh. There's a huge difference between a research project and a shipping product. I'm most excited for this development as well, but I'll be withholding my acclaim until they actually deliver it. So far, all of this stuff is an elaborate Montessori school science project.

xxbondsxx 15y ago
If you've followed the DARPA Grand Challenge since 2004, you'll realize that it's _not_ just a school science project. The Google car is going to be ready for market far before the legal, insurance, and other non-technical issues are sorted out. In other words, they could ship "now" if they weren't doing such a revolutionary product. If you make a trivially incremental improvement on an already-existing product (iPad3) then that's a lot easier
- 2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
  That still sounds silly. If you have the muscle of Google, wouldn't you get the legal ball rolling first, so that when your car is ready, you can sell immediately? Does a driverless car even count as basic research that they can spin off into a consumer product?
  - lsiebert 15y ago
    Which they did. Nevada now has laws governing autonomously piloted cars, and California is working on it, last I checked. If they can get such vehicles legal and available to the general public in California, it will be legal everywhere else within a year or two at most. California sets or has had the ability to set a lot of standards for the country, from vehicle emissions, textbooks, to now, apparently, driverless cars.
  - moe 15y ago
    I think you're simplifying a little. A driverless car is not just another car. It's not a fancy smartphone. It's a paradigm shift that will reshape society and erase tens of thousands of jobs in a relatively short timeframe. And it's one of the rare cases where you can actually predict and quantify these consequences with relatively good accuracy. I'd assume quite a few parties (read: all of them) will want to have a say in such a rollout, beyond technical peculiarities. For the better or the worse.
    - marshray 15y ago
      ISTR people saying that about the Segway.
      - moe 15y ago
        You're not seriously comparing the segway to driverless vehicles?
        marshray 15y ago
        Nah, I'm just comparing that bit of hyperbole. Like the "paradigm shift" that was to be the Segway, what problem does this solve exactly?
        pmb 15y ago
        40,000 deaths annually due to driver error
        moe 15y ago
        Also: Cost of human labor in logistics. Driverless cars don't need sleep.
      - ConstantineXVI 15y ago
        Driverless cars would more or less kill an entire job category overnight. Who wouldn't want a truck driver that doesn't make wrong turns, doesn't get distracted, forget to gas up, doesn't need to sleep, eat, or be paid (as much)?
        toomuchtodo 15y ago
        Don't forget: Offloading almost all freight traffic that can't be done by rail to automated vehicles between 1-6am daily. Airplanes fly constantly, because each second they're on the ground is a second they're not paying for their capital cost. Ever see how barren a 6 lane highway is at 3am in the morning on a weeknight?
marshallp 15y ago
That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder. They lucked out with search, a research project, and now they think they know what they're doing. They need to take their bozo hat off and realize they need to partner with the rest of the world to get stuff done. Apple's success is not just due to Job's taste but also extensive ties with chinese manufacturers and real focused hard work. A "secret" X lair in the second most expensive city in america ain't gonna cut it. That's they problem with google, they still haven't figured out they're a one hit wonder, real business is much harder edged than the "playtime" for kids that goes on there.
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  > That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder. You don't consider GMail, their dominance in ads, Android's ubiquity, the YouTube acquisition, etc as successes? Because all of those seem to have improved vastly since Google took control of them.
  - APuschilov 15y ago
    Given that Google is not about search anymore but about Google all those acquisitions make sense. Now Google totally controls the biggest assets online (not counting facebook). They could also know as much now as they would like to know about you to give them, data-wise, more than just a controlling position online. So the seperate entities don't even have to be profitable if they generate enough data exhaust for the mothership (what they clearly do).
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Google is not just about data collection, though data collection does help improve products (think distributed spam filtering). Most Google products exist because someone at Google thought people would like them. Making money is good, but not a primary concern. It seems crazy from the outside, but really, developers at Google are not sitting around trying to figure out how to build a huge and scary profile about you. We just want to play with fun things. (Yes, that generates a lot of data, and we do use a lot of that data for things that might not thrill you, like targeting ads. But ultimately, a lot of companies know a lot about you, and few try to be as transparent about it as Google does. At least you can stop giving Google data. Try to opt out of the credit reporting system.)
glimcat 15y ago
Google Street Map cars, then. You want to pick nits over Google being able to ship?
- danilocampos 15y ago
  That's not a consumer product, dude.

xxbondsxx 15y ago

If you've followed the DARPA Grand Challenge since 2004, you'll realize that it's _not_ just a school science project. The Google car is going to be ready for market far before the legal, insurance, and other non-technical issues are sorted out. In other words, they could ship "now" if they weren't doing such a revolutionary product. If you make a trivially incremental improvement on an already-existing product (iPad3) then that's a lot easier

2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
That still sounds silly. If you have the muscle of Google, wouldn't you get the legal ball rolling first, so that when your car is ready, you can sell immediately? Does a driverless car even count as basic research that they can spin off into a consumer product?
- lsiebert 15y ago
  Which they did. Nevada now has laws governing autonomously piloted cars, and California is working on it, last I checked. If they can get such vehicles legal and available to the general public in California, it will be legal everywhere else within a year or two at most. California sets or has had the ability to set a lot of standards for the country, from vehicle emissions, textbooks, to now, apparently, driverless cars.
- moe 15y ago
  I think you're simplifying a little. A driverless car is not just another car. It's not a fancy smartphone. It's a paradigm shift that will reshape society and erase tens of thousands of jobs in a relatively short timeframe. And it's one of the rare cases where you can actually predict and quantify these consequences with relatively good accuracy. I'd assume quite a few parties (read: all of them) will want to have a say in such a rollout, beyond technical peculiarities. For the better or the worse.
  - marshray 15y ago
    ISTR people saying that about the Segway.
    - moe 15y ago
      You're not seriously comparing the segway to driverless vehicles?
      - marshray 15y ago
        Nah, I'm just comparing that bit of hyperbole. Like the "paradigm shift" that was to be the Segway, what problem does this solve exactly?
        pmb 15y ago
        40,000 deaths annually due to driver error
        moe 15y ago
        Also: Cost of human labor in logistics. Driverless cars don't need sleep.
    - ConstantineXVI 15y ago
      Driverless cars would more or less kill an entire job category overnight. Who wouldn't want a truck driver that doesn't make wrong turns, doesn't get distracted, forget to gas up, doesn't need to sleep, eat, or be paid (as much)?
      - toomuchtodo 15y ago
        Don't forget: Offloading almost all freight traffic that can't be done by rail to automated vehicles between 1-6am daily. Airplanes fly constantly, because each second they're on the ground is a second they're not paying for their capital cost. Ever see how barren a 6 lane highway is at 3am in the morning on a weeknight?

marshallp 15y ago

That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder. They lucked out with search, a research project, and now they think they know what they're doing. They need to take their bozo hat off and realize they need to partner with the rest of the world to get stuff done. Apple's success is not just due to Job's taste but also extensive ties with chinese manufacturers and real focused hard work. A "secret" X lair in the second most expensive city in america ain't gonna cut it. That's they problem with google, they still haven't figured out they're a one hit wonder, real business is much harder edged than the "playtime" for kids that goes on there.

jokermatt999 15y ago
> That's the problem with the google boys, they're a one hit wonder. You don't consider GMail, their dominance in ads, Android's ubiquity, the YouTube acquisition, etc as successes? Because all of those seem to have improved vastly since Google took control of them.
- APuschilov 15y ago
  Given that Google is not about search anymore but about Google all those acquisitions make sense. Now Google totally controls the biggest assets online (not counting facebook). They could also know as much now as they would like to know about you to give them, data-wise, more than just a controlling position online. So the seperate entities don't even have to be profitable if they generate enough data exhaust for the mothership (what they clearly do).
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Google is not just about data collection, though data collection does help improve products (think distributed spam filtering). Most Google products exist because someone at Google thought people would like them. Making money is good, but not a primary concern. It seems crazy from the outside, but really, developers at Google are not sitting around trying to figure out how to build a huge and scary profile about you. We just want to play with fun things. (Yes, that generates a lot of data, and we do use a lot of that data for things that might not thrill you, like targeting ads. But ultimately, a lot of companies know a lot about you, and few try to be as transparent about it as Google does. At least you can stop giving Google data. Try to opt out of the credit reporting system.)

glimcat 15y ago

Google Street Map cars, then. You want to pick nits over Google being able to ship?

danilocampos 15y ago
That's not a consumer product, dude.