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Can anyone explain how this makes any business sense? Doesn't Uber have a self-driving business that competes directly with Waymo? Wasn't one of Uber's early en

Can anyone explain how this makes any business sense? Doesn't Uber have a self-driving business that competes directly with Waymo? Wasn't one of Uber's early engineering motivations for running on-prem infrastructure (instead of cloud) to avoid being cut off from GCP should Google decide to start competing? And now Uber is directly partnering with Google to offer a Google service through their platform?

ra7 2y ago
Uber doesn’t have a self driving business anymore. That was shut down after they killed a person in Arizona during testing. They divested much of it into Aurora, which I believe Uber still has a stake in. How this makes sense for Uber is that they don’t want to be left out when robotaxis replace human-driven ride hailing vehicles.
- Onavo 2y ago
  Nah, they shut down their self driving car division because they needed a boring conservative safe pair of hands for operations and the current CEO wasn't much of a visionary unlike the founder. Say what you must about Kalanick being a frat boy but he embodied "move fast and break things" like no other.
  - Atotalnoob 2y ago
    Woah man, this post seems a little out there. They killed someone. That should require a huge introspection and if needed, shut down unsafe lines of business. Their self driving car division was, by the accounts I read, never going to achieve self-driving and had serious problems. If being a visionary means you are okay with killing people, then fuck being a visionary. “Moving fast and breaking things” should NEVER include killing people.
    - jonas21 2y ago
      > That should require a huge introspection and if needed, shut down unsafe lines of business. Which line of business would that be? Maybe the one involving human drivers that leads to ~75 deaths per year [1]? Though that's still a lower-than-average death rate compared to the general population (so shutting it down without a replacement could cause even more deaths). You could argue that Uber has a moral imperative to replace its human drivers with automation as soon as possible. [1] https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?uclick_id=f43f1de6-27ff-43ab-bd20-eaf23373b8b0 https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?...
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Forgot about Waymo v Uber? https://waymo.com/blog/2017/02/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and/ https://waymo.com/blog/2017/02/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against... https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/waymo-v-uber-surprise-settlement-five-days-into-trial https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/waymo-v-uber-surprise-se... https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandowski-waymo-uber-lawsuit-sentence-18-months-prison-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandows...
lern_too_spel 2y ago
The real head scratcher is why Waymo would partner with Uber aside from operational incompetence. Maybe Waymo decided that depot services are too hard to spin up, but Uber doesn't do depot services either, so they're paying for Uber to spin that up and a little extra for Uber to make a profit while introducing an intermediary for ride hailing instead of using the ride hailing app they already built.
- dkrich 2y ago
  Probably just comes down to less friction in getting paying users in their cars since they already have the app installed and these are small roll outs. From the announcement it sounds like the streets of Austin will be covered in waymos but after having been downtown a few weeks ago I can say there are like 10 of them. Partnering with a ubiquitous app makes getting real users in these small launches feasible. Just a guess but if that’s accurate and then waymo expands to where it becomes the de facto option and familiar for a large number of ride hailers you can rest assured the next step will be to take back operations and cut Uber out
alephnerd 2y ago
> Doesn't Uber have a self-driving business that competes directly with Waymo It got axed during the layoffs in 2020-21. Alumni of Michelangelo and the Self Driving Teams founded a lot of the AI startups you hear about today. Furthermore, Uber's self-driving program was started when an ex-Goog exec stole Waymo IP when he joined Uber.
seekup 2y ago
other folks have responded about the state of Uber’s Autonomous driving program, so I just wanted to weigh in about the other question here. GCP was not a strong competitor (in our eyes) when the on-prem decision was being made in the 2011-2013 timeframe, which was also before there was even an Autonomous program. The reason early infra was on-prem largely boiled down to a general distrust for the cloud from the Boss, who in my recollection had had some bad experiences with other portfolio companies suffering major downtime due to AWS outages. Uber’s relationship with Google was great until that little legal matter. They were huge and very helpful investors in Uber.

ra7 2y ago

Uber doesn’t have a self driving business anymore. That was shut down after they killed a person in Arizona during testing. They divested much of it into Aurora, which I believe Uber still has a stake in. How this makes sense for Uber is that they don’t want to be left out when robotaxis replace human-driven ride hailing vehicles.

Onavo 2y ago
Nah, they shut down their self driving car division because they needed a boring conservative safe pair of hands for operations and the current CEO wasn't much of a visionary unlike the founder. Say what you must about Kalanick being a frat boy but he embodied "move fast and break things" like no other.
- Atotalnoob 2y ago
  Woah man, this post seems a little out there. They killed someone. That should require a huge introspection and if needed, shut down unsafe lines of business. Their self driving car division was, by the accounts I read, never going to achieve self-driving and had serious problems. If being a visionary means you are okay with killing people, then fuck being a visionary. “Moving fast and breaking things” should NEVER include killing people.
  - jonas21 2y ago
    > That should require a huge introspection and if needed, shut down unsafe lines of business. Which line of business would that be? Maybe the one involving human drivers that leads to ~75 deaths per year [1]? Though that's still a lower-than-average death rate compared to the general population (so shutting it down without a replacement could cause even more deaths). You could argue that Uber has a moral imperative to replace its human drivers with automation as soon as possible. [1] https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?uclick_id=f43f1de6-27ff-43ab-bd20-eaf23373b8b0 https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?...
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Forgot about Waymo v Uber? https://waymo.com/blog/2017/02/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and/ https://waymo.com/blog/2017/02/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against... https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/waymo-v-uber-surprise-settlement-five-days-into-trial https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/waymo-v-uber-surprise-se... https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandowski-waymo-uber-lawsuit-sentence-18-months-prison-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandows...

lern_too_spel 2y ago

The real head scratcher is why Waymo would partner with Uber aside from operational incompetence. Maybe Waymo decided that depot services are too hard to spin up, but Uber doesn't do depot services either, so they're paying for Uber to spin that up and a little extra for Uber to make a profit while introducing an intermediary for ride hailing instead of using the ride hailing app they already built.

dkrich 2y ago
Probably just comes down to less friction in getting paying users in their cars since they already have the app installed and these are small roll outs. From the announcement it sounds like the streets of Austin will be covered in waymos but after having been downtown a few weeks ago I can say there are like 10 of them. Partnering with a ubiquitous app makes getting real users in these small launches feasible. Just a guess but if that’s accurate and then waymo expands to where it becomes the de facto option and familiar for a large number of ride hailers you can rest assured the next step will be to take back operations and cut Uber out

alephnerd 2y ago

> Doesn't Uber have a self-driving business that competes directly with Waymo It got axed during the layoffs in 2020-21. Alumni of Michelangelo and the Self Driving Teams founded a lot of the AI startups you hear about today. Furthermore, Uber's self-driving program was started when an ex-Goog exec stole Waymo IP when he joined Uber.

seekup 2y ago

other folks have responded about the state of Uber’s Autonomous driving program, so I just wanted to weigh in about the other question here. GCP was not a strong competitor (in our eyes) when the on-prem decision was being made in the 2011-2013 timeframe, which was also before there was even an Autonomous program. The reason early infra was on-prem largely boiled down to a general distrust for the cloud from the Boss, who in my recollection had had some bad experiences with other portfolio companies suffering major downtime due to AWS outages. Uber’s relationship with Google was great until that little legal matter. They were huge and very helpful investors in Uber.