4 ms·

I'm really surprised. G ventures puts ton of money into uber, uber makes a huge pre order for google cars, uber gets put into google maps. And now this. I gu

I'm really surprised. G ventures puts ton of money into uber, uber makes a huge pre order for google cars, uber gets put into google maps. And now this. I guess google is like "well we got the hard part, self driving cars. Why not just go after this ourselves?" What is the thing google really wants? Is it more valuable to try to directly monetize all this vehicle traffic, or be the platform every else uses? Google could set up rev share, get access to all the vehicle data (even if they don't use google maps), and set google as default software in the car web experience. It seems greedy, arrogant, and unaligned with their core ways of making money. They're trying to be vertically integrated player which can work if you control all supply but once Google introduces the tech how long is it going to take for a rival to copy, parents aside?

jedberg 12y ago
I suspect it is more like "this part of the company wants to invest" and "this part of the company wants to build" and they are too big and dysfunctional to get both parts to talk to each other to come up with a single strategy. Or they are doing the Microsoft thing and pitting the departments against each other.
mcintyre1994 12y ago
> What is the thing google really wants? I think they want a seriously diversified revenue stream. This gives them data, yes - but it's also directly monetizable. If they see personal transport as a winner takes all market, and they can branch into deliveries, and they do have the best self driving cars then they have a serious advantage in the market and a path to a serious new revenue stream.
- randomsearch 12y ago
  > I think they want a seriously diversified revenue stream I totally agree with this. If I were working at Google, the main thing that would keep me awake at night is the long-term dependence on a single-source of income, i.e. advertising. And there's a lot of reasons advertising is not a good business to be reliant upon. It's pretty terrifying when you look at their revenue stats. I'm surprised they haven't already achieved this diversity yet, though. Surely at IPO it would have been their number one concern?

jedberg 12y ago

I suspect it is more like "this part of the company wants to invest" and "this part of the company wants to build" and they are too big and dysfunctional to get both parts to talk to each other to come up with a single strategy. Or they are doing the Microsoft thing and pitting the departments against each other.

mcintyre1994 12y ago

> What is the thing google really wants? I think they want a seriously diversified revenue stream. This gives them data, yes - but it's also directly monetizable. If they see personal transport as a winner takes all market, and they can branch into deliveries, and they do have the best self driving cars then they have a serious advantage in the market and a path to a serious new revenue stream.

randomsearch 12y ago
> I think they want a seriously diversified revenue stream I totally agree with this. If I were working at Google, the main thing that would keep me awake at night is the long-term dependence on a single-source of income, i.e. advertising. And there's a lot of reasons advertising is not a good business to be reliant upon. It's pretty terrifying when you look at their revenue stats. I'm surprised they haven't already achieved this diversity yet, though. Surely at IPO it would have been their number one concern?