
Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor - geoffwoo
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/exclusive-google-and-uber-are-going-to-war-over-taxis
======
softdev12
I'm glad that the article highlighted how valuable the mapping information is
that Google collects. While Uber probably could still run its current
operations without Google map data, there is a much smaller probability that
they would be able to run a self-driving car service without a highly accurate
mapping product. And to build a mapping product is really difficult and
expensive. I was surprised when Google starting putting money into mapping the
streets because it's a giant effort with major barriers to entry. Nokia bought
a company called Navteq that was the clear leader (and basically a monopolist)
in driving the streets and collecting the data (they originally supplied data
to Google Maps). Navteq supplemented the data with satellite images and other
sources, but the roads change often enough that you need people driving on the
streets.

So, Uber really needs to start thinking about the mapping aspect. Perhaps they
can incent their current drivers to start reporting back all the street info
as they pick up their passengers. Of course, this would bring up problems if
the drivers eventually realize that this data could be used to replace them.
It would be interesting to see uber cars with Google StreetView style cameras
on their hoods.

~~~
threeseed
Uber can simply license their maps from various third parties the same way
every car company does today for their GPS.

Google has added some decent additions to Google Maps but really 95% of what
they had they purchased. For example Whereis/Yellow Pages data here in
Australia.

~~~
jedberg
Licensed maps are great for GPS units telling a human where to go, but a self
driving car needs much more detailed information that most likely only google
has.

~~~
threeseed
If Google is the only company with this information how come all the car
manufacturers have active projects that don't rely on their data. It's because
Google has nothing that other companies don't have/need. It's not like Google
magically acquired all their data. They bought most of it.

------
dojomouse
So much criticism of Google! My question: Why on earth would Google want to
cede any significant chunk of the personal transport value stream to Uber - or
acquire them at a $40Bil+ valuation - when the main (only?) semi-uniquely
valuable thing Uber have (a large network of drivers) is worth approximately
zero dollars in a self-driving vehicle scenario. Uber are valuable and
effective in a human-driven vehicle model because they have achieved critical
mass in the pool of human drivers on their network, and are in a position to
grow that pool. In a self driving vehicle model critical mass of
vehicles/drivers is available to anyone with a decent line of credit.

~~~
mathattack
The value is only partially in the driver base. Drivers are tangible. But the
true value is intangible.

There is enormous brand value in thinking "I'll get an Uber" as a synonym for
"I'll get a taxi, but right what I need it, and it probably will smell
better." There is value of having that app on the phone, with credit card #
already in place.

But perhaps more important is that Uber is building a graph of everyone who
wants to go somewhere at any point in time. (And where they all wanted to go
in the past) This is what's worth $40 billion. If two companies have automatic
cars, the one who knows where they want to go wins.

Perhaps Google wanted to buy at $2 billion or $5, but not at $40.

~~~
cabalamat
> There is enormous brand value in thinking "I'll get an Uber"

Yes, and there is enormous value in "I'll Google it", but that doesn't stop
people from using other search engines (and online services) as soon as a
better one comes along, because the cost to the user of switching is small.

Name recognition does not, IMO, make Uber worth $40bn.

~~~
mathattack
It's not just name recognition - it's the data, and already being the first
app on someone's phone to do the task.

------
hosay123
My inner paranoid finds this interesting from the perspective of Google
entering yet another domain where they have high accuracy data on the
present/future whereabouts and private concerns of a large number of people..
add it to the hundred other properties they maintain that appear to have no
direct business value other than capturing masses of sensitive data that was
previously nicely decentralized and private.

Can't book a flight (ITA), order a taxi (this), book a hotel or chat with a
friend (Gmail), or pay for dinner (Wallet) without generating an activity log
with a single company.

Even if (and perhaps even probably) Google weren't doing this intentionally,
they've already demonstrated through failing to encrypt their inter-DC
connections how they're becoming a massive single point of failure (remember
Snowden showed us the NSA were tapping Google's internal network already).
Whether the end result is an intelligence service tap, or some legislative
measure affecting the company done in the open, I'll simply never be
comfortable with one company concentrating so much personal data affecting so
many people.

~~~
higherpurpose
I wonder if eventually NSA will get massive layoffs because much of what
they'd do would be redundant, and for 80 percent of the stuff they want they
could just ask/hack Google. The other 20 percent employees will remain for
users of Google competitors and more targeted spying. So essentially 80
percent of NSA's "intelligence" would be outsourced to Google (for free).

~~~
nofutureagain
> they could just ask/hack Google

You mean "buy from".

This is Google's core business. And I don't consider the NSA more creepy than
Google's other customers.

~~~
newaccountfool
Surely they don't need to buy it, surely they can request it under the guise
of national security.

~~~
pyrocat
"request" haha

------
fidotron
Uber have struck me before as a bigger potential headache for Google than even
Facebook were/are, and I suspect this is all an effort to acquire them and
drive the price down.

There is something about the automated dispatch at giant scale business which
overlaps with the search as interface idea. "Get me to [wherever]" is a
natural extension of what you might do after searching. Furthermore, the act
of finding a driver is itself a search. Feed the driver information back into
search and it gets entertaining, with queries like "What are the restaurants
right now with 80% rating, tables available and will cost me less than $20 to
get to?" That's a query you can only answer with the driver and price data. As
such Uber have the hard bit and can grow the rest, Google face a move into a
physical world full of people, which is pretty much their Achilles heel.

~~~
billsimpson
Facebook was viewed as a threat to Google for two primary reasons:

\- Facebook had access to tremendous amounts of personal information, and it
was assumed they could leverage this data to improve ads and search and beat
Google at their own game.

\- Everyone sat at their desktop computer staring at Facebook for hours on
end, making it valuable ad real estate. Again, this cut into Google's core
business.

So is Uber a comparable headache for Google? I don't see Uber as being a
threat to their core business (their business is ads, not search; search just
happens to be their best channel for ad delivery). Arguably it provides
valuable information to improve their ad targeting, but it seems like a huge
investment for relatively little payout in that regard.

My guess is that it's a natural extension of their work on self-driving cars.
People have identified how Uber would be natural fit for self-driving cars.
But I doubt Google wants to be reliant on a third-party company with
reputation problems to introduce these cars to the world. That would introduce
too many variables. So they're cutting out the middle man and doing it
themselves, at least at first.

So how does this impact advertising? A nation-wide or global fleet of
automated, networked cars would obviously produce a glut of valuable
information (arguably their Uber-clone would too, but an automated solution
could be taken to another scale). But really, I think the self-driving car is
a disruptive enough technology that it could be completely orthogonal to their
core business and still worth pursuing.

On a side note, can we agree yet that Facebook is quickly fading into
irrelevance? It seems to have two important properties left (neither of which
they developed): WhatsApp and Instagram. WhatsApp gives Facebook as much value
as AIM gave AOL in its later years (which is to say, not enough to justify the
company's size and market capitalization). Instagram took Facebook's best use
case (looking at your friends' photos) and stripped away everything that made
the experience suck: ads and Farmville (in other words, Facebook's business
model).

I like what they're doing with React though.

~~~
thirtyseven
Passengers in cars are potentially a huge captive advertising audience.

~~~
billsimpson
Boston cabs do this now (I assume it's happening all over) by playing a short
ad reel that loops over and over. It's pretty horrible.

If that's their end game here, I'd be disappointed.

~~~
fixedd
I only take cabs 5-10 times a year anymore, and never in Boston, but I've
never been in a cab that pestered me with advertisements. If I found myself in
one, it'd be the last ride I took with that company.

On the last flight I took with Delta Airlines they had all the TVs drop down
and they played five minutes worth of advertisements on the screens and
through the loudspeakers. I just refuse to deal with companies that are
hostile to their customers.

~~~
mgkimsal
I think every flight I've taken in the last 2 years did this on multiple
carriers. refusal might man driving everywhere.

------
Vermeulen
Google seems unable to have a partner without eventually entering their market
and becoming enemies. Apple before Android, Twitter before Google+ - I guess
it's inevitable with how many different industries Google tries to tackle. I
think if this service is entirely defined by autonomous vehicles it's really a
complete different service than Uber. No more driver ratings or passenger
ratings, all the same car type, and it's own vast legal challenges

~~~
ChuckMcM
I noted back in 2008 how this was an interesting side effect of Google's
empowerment policy.

The way it occurred was that anyone of moderate level inside of Google could
start a project involving some outside company. This was seductively easy
because those companies always wanted the validation that came from working
with Google. But the person could be just a run of the mill senior engineer
type (of which there were many).

So this engineer and this outside partner start putting together a mashup, and
it goes well. The partner is loving the Google traffic and the senior engineer
inside of Google is thinking "Wow, this is going to look great on my next
promotion request." So it grows and grows, largely unnoticed by the folks who
are really the movers and shakers in Google.

Then it continues to go well, the engineer has recruited a couple more
Googlers to help her work on the project and it hits an tipping point. It
really needs a full time project manager and the amount of resources inside
the Google cloud it is using has gotten to the point where you needed to
allocate them specifically. Since everyone likes success this goes swimmingly
and now lots of people in the world are using this mashup service. At that
point it gets the attention of the 'big boys'.

What happens next is an interesting reverse slicing of the project to figure
out what its business model is, how much revenue it is generating, how much it
could generate. I always wondered, but never had confirmed if somewhere there
was a meeting to look at these and decide on next steps.

One of the outcomes of this noticing could be "Hmmm, we have an advantage/key
technology and could do this better if we recast this as a Google Product
rather than being a provider to this Partner's product." And then there is
some announcement of this new product initiative at Google and how cool it is
going to be. Meanwhile the original partner now realized that Google isn't a
partner anymore, rather they are at best a competitor and at worst a threat to
their existence. At that point, depending on their resources they start
scrambling to reduce their dependency on Google services in order to avoid
that future.

I think for most people this is understood as a possible 'success' outcome of
working with Google.

~~~
wldcordeiro
The other option that you didn't mention is that Google sees an opportunity
for acquiring the partner.

------
bcantrill
This is not at all a surprise, and I fully expect Amazon to also ultimately
enter this space. (I have no insider knowledge of either company.) It's
amazing to me how many people think that Uber is somehow building a deep moat
when these other companies (Google, Amazon, etc.) have a much deeper
connection with their customers -- to say nothing of the data that have
collected. Given perfect rider competition and (especially) perfect driver
competition, how does the advantage not lie with the established company and
brand? Given Uber's nose-bleed valuation, I suspect that they may become the
Webvan-esque poster child of this bubble: visionary, but ultimately a
ludicrous valuation and absurd misallocation of capital that was obvious to
all only in retrospect.

~~~
ForHackernews
Forget Google, Lyft and Sidecar are basically already the same thing as Uber.
Plus local cab companies are developing their own apps. The barrier to entry
in ride-dispatching is absurdly low. I wish somebody (city government?
craigslist?) would just make a free clearing-house for it.

------
k-mcgrady
If Google competes directly with a company they are invested in via GV they're
going to really damage the reputation of GV. Why would you accept investment
from them if they're going to get access to your private info and then turn
around and screw you.

~~~
lpolovets
I don't have insider knowledge, but I believe Google claims that there's a
wall between Google and GV, and they act completely independently. This makes
sense to me -- otherwise, no one would pitch ideas to GV that Google might one
day implement (i.e. basically all ideas that have a software angle).

To me, if Google uses insider knowledge to copy Uber, then that would be huge
mistake and credibility killer; if they want to build up their own competitor
from scratch without any insider knowledge, then that's their business.

~~~
spoondan
I don't think Google Ventures's role is particularly relevant. Companies
should be aware of what data they are providing Google when making use of
Google services. Google doesn't need to have insider information to have a
wealth of information about Uber trips: the number of trips, when they most
frequently occur, duration and miles covered, what cities are most popular,
what are the popular starting and ending points. All of these data can be
mined from just watching Uber's use of the Google Maps API. It may not be
contractually permitted, but the data are there for Google to use.

Through a paranoid lens, Google APIs are corporate espionage you sign up for.
Since Google is a valuable and entrenched service provider, they can get away
with it. What I could see companies doing in return is attempting to obscure
their API usage by fabricating requests. For example, Uber could break the
correspondence between API requests and trips by sending requests that look
authentic but don't correspond to any actual trips. This kind of corporate
information warfare sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel, but
it certainly feels present and real when you look at Google's relationships.

~~~
ItsMattyG
This is the essence of Simon Wardley's ILC model
([http://blog.gardeviance.org/2013/01/ecosystems.html](http://blog.gardeviance.org/2013/01/ecosystems.html))
- It's a strategy that every smart maker of low level services implements.

------
billsimpson
Many people here are suggesting that Google views Uber as a threat or a
competitor. My take is that (a) Google wants to follow through on its self-
driving car experiment, (b) public transportation would be a natural fit this
product, and (c) Google doesn't want to be reliant on Uber, Lyft, or any other
middleman for introducing self-driving car to the word. Initially, it will be
a tightly-controlled roll-out that will eliminate as many variables and risk
factors as possible.

This is their way of getting a head start in that direction, and smoothing the
transition of the technology to partners like Uber down the road.

------
ajju
Google is the only company with a potential edge over Uber right now. The
point in time at which self-driving cars are usable by the the public is the
only visible inflection point where Uber's hegemony is truly threatened.

(edit) The article suggest self driving cars, and by extension Google's
ridesharing service won't be ready for 2-5 more years.

~~~
aetherson
Huh? No. Anyone with relatively deep pockets could easily disrupt Uber right
now. Uber's technology is pretty simple and straightforward, and not
meaningfully patent-protected. You can do the same tech given six months or so
and a decent engineering team.

And Uber's customer-base is price sensitive. You can easily get into this
market if you're willing to price compete with Uber.

Now, Uber is very willing to price-compete ferociously. It will _absolutely_
drive you both deep into unprofitability. And Uber has quite a war-chest, and
it can push around its smaller competitors this way. But as rich as Uber is,
there are plenty of companies that are richer. Way richer. Orders of magnitude
richer.

I think that so far, the really big boys have said, "Why do we want to get
into a price war with Uber? They'll fight until the last breath, I don't see
why we should launch a deeply unprofitable ride-sharing service."

Amazon might do it eventually. They have expertise in operating at high scale,
low-margin, and they're big enough to destroy Uber. They also might want to
use a ride-sharing service to deliver goods. I think that right now, they've
mostly said, "We're unconvinced that there's a real logistics business here,
and so we aren't going to get involved."

Google might do it for the data.

I can't see Apple bothering -- it's pretty far outside of their corporate
comfort zone. But if, I don't know, Tim Cook gets hit by a bus and their new
CEO wants to make major changes, they absolutely COULD do it.

Microsoft could maybe do it in an attempt to create a compelling entry-point
to their ecosystem, but it's not very Microsofty.

I don't see that any non-computer companies currently have a reason to try it.

~~~
nostrademons
The hard part of Uber isn't the tech, it's building up the network. Two-sided
marketplaces are really hard to build from scratch, when there are no
competitors. They're virtually impossible once both your customers and your
drivers are like "I've already had good experiences with Uber. Why would I
take a chance on you?"

That's why Google has an advantage over everyone else - for them it's a _one_
-sided marketplace, they don't need to worry about the driver. And that gives
them a big cost advantage over Uber.

~~~
aetherson
The answer to "Why would I take a chance on you?" is simple: "I'm cheaper."

Neither Uber's passengers nor their drivers are deeply loyal. They are for the
most part brought to the service by the value prop. Uber is of course an
established brand, and that brand has some value, but the value is hardly
infinite. A deep pocketed competitor could establish themselves.

~~~
nostrademons
I assume by "it's cheaper", you mean that an Uber competitor would charge
their customers $X, pay out $Y (> $X) to their drivers, and subsidize $Y - $X
by pouring in cash from their other products.

This sort of cross-subsidy has a poor track record when used against well-
capitalized opponents. (In many situations, it's also illegal: see "dumping".)
Unless you can complete wipe out the competition and force them out of
business, you're pouring money down the drain, and building nothing of value
with it. Bing Cashback resulted in most people doing their searching on
Google, identifying what they wanted to buy, and then buying it on Bing so
that Microsoft would pay them.

You get very odd arbitrage situations that basically result in funneling money
straight from the corporation that's being idiotic to a savvy consumer. If a
company did what you suggest, I would immediately sign up with them, along
with my fiancee. We would then use the app every time we took a trip together
or picked each other up. Since one of us is the driver and one is the
passenger and the driver earns more than the passenger pays, we'd be making
money at this company's expense every time we drove somewhere. Now imagine
every carpool, group of friends, or just random strangers who setup a business
to exploit this arbitrage opportunity doing that.

~~~
aetherson
Yep.

And, just to be clear, that's what Uber does. Not in as simple and
straightforward a way as you're suggesting, but at least large fractions of
the time, it pays its drivers more than its passengers pay it (for example:
it's constantly giving me $10 coupons. It has sign-up bonuses and income
guarantees for drivers. Etc.) Of course, it's spending investment money, not
money from its other non-existent businesses.

So if you and your fiancee want to try this business, you can do it right now
with Uber. Or Lyft. I suspect you will find that despite the fact that there
is theoretically a fair amount of money on the table here, they've made it
obnoxious enough to get that you won't bother with it.

------
xivzgrev
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?

~~~
mcintyre1994
> 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
> 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?

------
rottyguy
Am I the only one thinking a targeted convergence with driverless cars down
the road (no pun intended)? Once you remove the largest cost factor (the
human), does pricing reduce to $.56/mi (or whatever the Standard Mileage Rate,
or derivative thereof, is at the time).

Added with Express to overload deliveries to maximize utility (maybe offer
riders a discount if they can make an express stop along the way...)

~~~
nilkn
On-demand driverless transportation from any A to any B at $.56/mile would be
truly revolutionary. I wonder how many years off we are from this.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Electric vehicles cost about 1-3 cents/mile for the electricity. They also
require so little service, I would assume the cost would be closer to 10-20
cents/mile for a self-driving electric vehicle.

~~~
rottyguy
I was baselining from here: [http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-
for-Business,...](http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for-
Business,-Medical-and-Moving-Announced)

but, sure, it would most likely be less.

~~~
ajju
That $0.56 number includes depreciation. There are other costs like insurance
which are non-trivial. Initially at least, it's not going to be much less.

~~~
rottyguy
Actually, insurance in driverless cars _should_ be trivial. Accidents should
drop to near 0 (over time) due to driver error... at least in theory.

~~~
username223
That's like saying "software should become bug-free over time." I'm not sure
it's actually getting _worse_ over time, but it sure isn't getting better.
Have you ever had to find a bug in a Wordpress plugin written in PHP by a
part-time developer, that generates JavaScript, that in turn generates buggy
HTML? I doubt wonky driverless cars trying to optimize a bunch of conflicting
metrics (operation cost, utilization, revenue (from fares/ads/analytics),
security, etc.), plugged into a constantly updating global mapping system,
will have a decreasing number of bugs over time.

~~~
bsdpython
Google has an insane level of motivation to wring out any and all bugs from a
driverless car. Even a single deadly accident in one of their cars could
potentially destroy their entire business. Comparing that type of software to
a Wordpress plugin makes no sense. The potential cost of a bug is huge in this
case thus you will get very good software with any driverless car.

------
relaxatorium
They've well and truly inherited the 90s Microsoft banner of being the tech
company that wants to be in every line of business at all times.

~~~
cpeterso
Wall Street demands infinite growth so the only option is to eventually enter
all markets.

~~~
sumedh
If I am not mistaken the two Google founders have majority of the controlling
shares so it would not really matter what wall street demands.

------
bhaumik
Google replied to the Bloomberg article with a cryptic tweet.

"@business We think you'll find Uber and Lyft work quite well. We use them all
the time."

[https://twitter.com/google/status/562392039459807232](https://twitter.com/google/status/562392039459807232)

------
geoffwoo
Google could cut Uber down hard by pulling Google Maps API access. Ballsiest
play Google has ever done if they execute on this. Love it.

~~~
paulhauggis
so when any other company does something like this, we cry anti-trust. But
when Google does it, it's good business?

I'm not sure where all of this Google love comes from on HN (besides all of
the engineers that work there). Google is just as evil as any large
corporation.

They may surgar-coat everything with a "do no evil" mantra, but it's just good
PR. When you peel back these layers, it's business as usual.

~~~
smtddr
_> > Google is just as evil as any large corporation._

Let's not exaggerate. Google might not be perfect; nobody is, but their
actions are great magnitudes in distance from the evil some other companies
have done. I'd rather work for Google than any of the companies below:

\- [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/10/1141724/-Walmart-
fu...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/10/1141724/-Walmart-fuels-
inequality-epidemic-taking-advantage-of-our-safety-net)

\-
[http://www.alternet.org/story/52526/rural_communities_exploi...](http://www.alternet.org/story/52526/rural_communities_exploited_by_nestle_for_your_bottled_water)

\-
[http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/08/02/3466915/chiquita-c...](http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/08/02/3466915/chiquita-
colombia-ruling/)

\- [http://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-metivier/module-2-why-
doe...](http://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-metivier/module-2-why-does-
business-need-ethics/case-the-ford-pinto/)

\- [https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-
prisons](https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-prisons)

\- ...just about any oil company.

\- ...The diamond industry.

\- ...and I'm highly suspicious of what goes on in insurance & credit card
companies.

~~~
paulhauggis
Google's entire business is based on completely taking every single one of our
actions, thoughts, connections, and interests and selling it out to
advertisers.

Most Android phones push you to put everything into the cloud. Do you know
why? Oh yeah, that's right, so they can sell your data to advertisers.

Recently, they stopped putting organic search terms in referral traffic from
the Google search engine to a website, effectively making it impossible to use
any other applications except Google Adsense. Great company, right?

They have had a monopoly as bad and far reaching as Microsoft..yet I rarely
hear the hatred that I used to hear about Microsoft in the late 90s.

It seems like all you need to do is support the developer community by giving
out lots of free software/open source and the tech community will forgive you
for pretty much anything (employing you at $100,000+/year also helps in this
forgiveness).

------
sushirain
The key words are "long term". I am concerned that these obstacles will not be
overcome in "3 to 5 years":

* "Chris Urmson of Google has said that the lidar technology cannot spot potholes or humans, such as a police officer, signaling the car to stop." [1]

* "Another big problem for Google is the current cost of its driverless car, which is reportedly outfitted with a whopping $250,000 in equipment." [2]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car)

[2]
[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/21/3-reasons-g...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/21/3-reasons-
google-incs-driverless-cars-will-hit-a-d.aspx)

------
rottyguy
I'm sure this has been discussed on a different (uber/lyft) thread but being a
nyc'er and amazed at the prices of taxi medallions through the years, I'm glad
to see this bubble finally popping (prices are still insane mind you)!-- now
if we can do the same for the cost of higher education... With google coming
into the fray, this can only drop further.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/upshot/new-york-city-
taxi-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/upshot/new-york-city-taxi-
medallion-prices-keep-falling-now-down-
about-25-percent.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1)

------
wkcamp
Out of curiosity, are there any companies in previous history that model the
approach Google has done thus far, such as expanding into a vast amount of
industries and successfully becoming a contender in those?

Anyway, I'm sure Google has enough money to support any failures (this point
was made in a previous article about the multi-tool card). But, in the long
run, how will Google prevent itself from appearing to look like a monopoly
(such as Apple's iPhones in the earlier days)?

------
don_draper
The very definition of being a victim of their own success

------
haberman
> David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of
> corporate development, joined the Uber board of directors in 2013, and has
> served on it ever since.

Not super related to this story, but I always have to wonder: why do powerful
people join boards? What's in it for them? It seems like an awful lot of work,
responsibility, and potential for conflict of interest. What do board members
get out of it?

~~~
mikeyouse
If Drummond got 0.1% Equity as a Director, it would've been worth $3.4M the
day he joined and if he wasn't diluted, it would be worth $40M today. (I
realize that both of those assumptions are unlikely, but it's still
interesting as an example)

~~~
ajju
It's pretty unlikely that Drummond got any Uber equity. He isn't an
independent director, he's representing Google as an investor on Uber's board.

~~~
mikeyouse
This is a good point -- I was thinking of our process to secure independent
directors.

------
andy_ppp
I misread the headline; I actually think that all big companies should attempt
to set up their own competitor (with a very small flat team, but resources,
users, internal datasets etc.). It would be a big investment but would cement
monopoly positions and make it even harder for competitors to gain any sort of
traction.

A new search engine from Google written with different goals and views of how
things should be done would be very interesting and probably gain a good
portion of Bing and Yahoo! Users in the process. This applies to a lot of
businesses of course.

An Uber from Google could also be great too but their once clear idea of what
they are is getting fragmented and that'll show in the implementation and UX
of Google Cabs.

------
mathattack
I look at this with great anticipation. This will be an enormous reducer of
congestion. Driverless cars will remove many of the headaches and hassles of
high-density commutes. Imagine being able to pop a beer in the backseat as an
automated car drives you home.

~~~
BobMarz
If working shifts were staggered that would do more to reduce congestion I
think.

~~~
mathattack
I don't see that happening any time soon. More likely to have the automated
cars first.

------
kanamekun
Makes a lot more sense now why they bought Waze. It wasn't just to snatch it
out of the hands of Apple and Facebook to protect the Google Maps franchise.
It was to play keepaway from Uber, and prepare for the enteral launch of
Google (Autonomous) Car.

------
dannymick
You can talk about valuations or Google becoming a cheeky competitor to Uber
but there are some deep economic implications. Millions of cab drivers or
anyone who drives for a living will be losing their jobs, as a result of this.

~~~
potatolicious
Indeed, and the way we casually throw around "oh they'll find something else
to do" is shameful. Many (most!) people affected by this _won 't_ be able to
retrain into new, better jobs, and the knowledge economy is largely off-limits
to many of them anyways.

The "retraining" argument is nothing more than a tool for our kind to
disingenuously dismiss the negative impacts that come with progress.

[edit] and in the time it took to write this post someone already responded to
that effect, hurray HN predictability :)

~~~
dannymick
Exactly!

Taxi cab drivers, in NYC, who own their medallions have taken out huge loans
in order to obtain the right the drive people in New York City. They can't
just "retrain"/find another job when they've got to continue driving 12 hours
a day just to make ends meet and pay off their loan.

~~~
potatolicious
Even the drivers who aren't under loan obligations can't just "retrain" \-
where are the educational resources? How do they come up with the money to
stop working and go back to school?

And even if they are magically able to obtain the funds and time and ability
to retrain, what kind of environment do they then face?

Imagine if a taxi driver somehow got their hands on $20K and went to hacker
school. What kind of treatment does a hypothetical 40 year-old ex-taxi-driver-
turned-programmer face when interviewing for entry level programming jobs, in
an industry infamous for its ageism and obsession with pedigree?

None of this adds up. In reality the loss of entire industries means chronic
unemployment and under-employment for most. We can prop up the outliers who
manage to successfully move to other fields all we want, that doesn't make the
poverty and desperation that results any less real.

Now we can argue that the suffering of millions of people is a necessary part
of progress, but pretending that these people will just magically fly off to
other jobs is a level of classist lunacy that's only tenable for someone who
has never stepped outside their little upper class white collar bubble.

------
obilgic
Google maps has already started showing Uber price estimates when you enter a
route

~~~
JeremyBanks
Note that it only does this if you already have the Uber app installed; it
isn't promoting Uber to non-users.

------
CPLX
Every single time there is a big discussion thread about Uber on HN about half
the commentary is about self-driving cars and how various decisions are being
made now based on the inevitability of self driving cars. Every time this
happens I always wonder why nobody seems to recognize the obvious fact that
self driving cars have nothing to do with any of this stuff and won't make
economic sense for a company like Uber in any time horizon that it makes
business sense to take into account now.

~~~
ghaff
Autonomous vehicles seem to set off this distortion field that makes otherwise
intelligent people ignore everything they know about the state of any number
of technologies and the nature of bringing enormously complex systems from
research labs into production. We could probably have autonomous vehicles in a
limited way under controlled circumstances like interstates in a decade or so.
Though if that's optimistic I wouldn't be surprised given that this would be a
feature of $100K luxury cars. Robo taxis? My money is on multiple decades
which is utterly uninteresting for a VC funded company today.

------
tkrupicka
This concept seems like the next logical step for Google's push for
mapping/autonomous vehicles. I think the most interesting challenge they'll
have going forward is dealing with the same union/labor opposition that Uber
has had to deal with. If they can push their driverless technology it would
really change the landscape of adoption in cities.

------
jackgavigan
Meanwhile, Uber is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to build self-
driving cars: [http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-
mellon](http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-mellon)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987441)

------
xixixao
I also don't understand how this is news to anyone. The fact that Google
wasn't planning on selling its driverless cars but instead provide a service
was discussed months ago, including the fact that the way this service would
be purchased via a phone. I am especially doubtful Uber's board wouldn't
notice this...

~~~
xixixao
I don't understand why this remark deserves a downvote, don't you think that
this "news" from some internal source on the board simply doesn't add up? Have
I wrote something incorrect?

------
joering2
Imagine you wake up Monday morning and your Android tells you that it
automatically upgraded (beautyness of default settings) the default Google Map
app on your phone, you tap it out of curiosity, and it asks you "would you
like the cab downstairs in 5 minutes?"

Oh well; there goes Uber's 50 billion dollars valuation...

~~~
kalleboo
Doesn't it already do that?
[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OVYK68BPu6k/U2E6Jdhpp2I/AAAAAAAAC9...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OVYK68BPu6k/U2E6Jdhpp2I/AAAAAAAAC9g/t1NfzZ_Igpc/s1600/Uber.png)

------
domoarevil
Why don't G just _block_ all Uber drivers from utilizing Google Maps, forcing
them to an inferior Mapping/Route product, lowering the quality of the Uber
experience. (Only Uber'd a few times and I'm sure the drivers had G maps, but
I may be wrong, I was surely drunk.)

------
S_A_P
Just think what a cash cow it would be to have google self driving cars run an
uber like service...

------
deepGem
Regarding mapping - one overlooked aspect is the fine grain detail required
for driverless cars. For example - current precision is for a road, required
precision for driverless cars is for a lane. Not sure how Google can leverage
Uber to solve this.

~~~
XorNot
Driverless cars use computer-vision to find lanes. They also can read street
signs in some implementations. The required precision is not really a problem
you'd want to try and solve with mapping alone.

------
avodonosov
Shuld Facebook be afraid of Google Plus, and Amazon of Google App Engine?

Google wants to be everywhere, but it looks like it doesn't have enough good
developers.

I think Uber has chance to overcome Google, even if Google really decided to
compete in this area.

------
kunle
Imagining a shorter path here would be Google buying Lyft and integrating into
maps?

------
miguelrochefort
Is there anything special about Uber, other than its brand?

How hard can it be to implement an Uber clone? Like a week?

What's stopping anyone from entering this space? Is it technology? Marketing?
Regulation? Trust? A secret sauce?

I'd love to understand.

~~~
bsdpython
The technology itself is probably not that difficult to build. The difficulty
is launching a robust two sided marketplace. Now that there are already
existing two sided marketplaces in this space it makes it even more difficult
for a new entrant. In the same vein, building a social network isn't that
difficult but getting a huge user base to generate network effects is
extremely difficult.

------
msoad
Google proved that it can do logistic-heavy business with it's Google Express.
I'm sure if they do something like Uber, it would be as good as Google
Express.

------
IgorPartola
Is the long game here to have self-driving cars everywhere so that the driver
can spend more time on their phone and therefore clicking on their ads?

------
Animats
Google General Services. Whatever you want done, whenever you want it done,
Google will find someone to do it.

 _" We also walk dogs."_

------
bhartzer
What are the chances that Google's "uber" program will involve self-driving
cars?

~~~
xasos
This would be so cool to see. That would give Google such a huge advantage.

------
sparkzilla
Meanwhile Google's core search business is looking increasingly vulnerable.

~~~
scep12
How's that?

~~~
sparkzilla
The core search is getting less profitable each year. Apps are cutting into
the search engine business, and the actual search results are a mess. See my
blog post for one example: [http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-
hole/](http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/)

------
shinamee
It does actually makes sense since they have all the resources (MAP,CAR,MONEY)

------
akurilin
Either way, I will be happy to be driven around by my digital overlords.

------
rmc
Maybe it will be as good as Google's Facebook compeditor

------
kumarski
hahahahaha. Good luck google.

Anyone game to take longbets on Google building a successful product
internally and scaling it with their traditional approach?

I'm always doubtful.

------
zkhalique
How much can Google squeeze its Maps customers without antitrust kicking in?
Could they just cut off Uber the same way FB or Twitter or Apple can revoke an
app's access to their platform?

------
jbigelow76
Will I have to have a Google+ account to ride?

------
oimaz
Do partners from google ventures have a board seat in Uber. If so, isn't this
a conflict, as Google is privy to all the internal strategy at Uber

------
cjbenedikt
makes you wonder if Uber disclosed this to Goldman or their clients when
raising money???

~~~
rasz_pl
you mean like this?

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5758734/uber-will-
eventual...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5758734/uber-will-eventually-
replace-all-its-drivers-with-self-driving-cars)

------
nakedrobot2
Considering how many people hate Uber, I can't imagine much sympathy being
headed in their direction with this news.

------
BobMarz
Too bad Google Drive is taken.

------
xacaxulu
THANK GOD!

------
FrankenPC
Guber. I like it!

------
xiaoma
gg

------
rev_null
Goober?

------
comrade1
On the one hand, this is great. Competition and I couldn't wish Google's
infinite pockets on a more terrible group of people.

On the other hand, Google has only been successful with search and advertising
and are known for terrible customer service. I mean, who are you going to call
when your driver rapes you? You'll never be able to talk to a human.

~~~
notatoad
You call the police if somebody rapes you. that isn't a customer service
problem.

~~~
comrade1
Are you a robot?

~~~
oldmanjay
What would a non-robot such as yourself hope to accomplish by calling the
company that hires a rapist? Seems like the police would be a much more
effective option for walking meat.

------
patronagezero
Your very own government sponsored taxi, less city and state control and now
with improved tracking and information awareness! Red or blue pill, they'll
choke 'em both down with a few sips of progress.

------
inmyunix
this is the least surprising news of the decade.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its at least mildly surprising -- lots of people assumed Google would try to
get in this market, sure, but most of the speculation, given Google's
investment in Uber, has focused around Google acquiring Uber, not competing
with them.

------
closetnerd
Good god, that'd we way too much power in the hands of a single company.
They're awfully close to Googlizing the world. Which I think is theoretically
the closest civilization could get to utopia. But I'm not one for utopia.

