I'd really prefer any company working on self-driving technology collaborate anyway. I don't see it as important for getting users on the platforms as suggested in the article or even as a 'business' decision.<p>As we begin adopting automated driving, there comes a point where it's helpful to have the systems communicating intentions with each other; part of the issue with driving manually is the uncertainty over other drivers' intent. Using automation and letting drivers talk in this manner would likely reduce crashes down to manual driver fault and significant bugs or sensor errors as it's adopted more. This isn't what they're after at the moment, but encouraging collaboration in this space could make that an easier path moving forward.<p>Not to mention, a single accepted protocol with higher adoption could allow a single car to gain much more valuable data beyond what's in their immediate vicinity, but could tell them what's going on nearby and even real-time traffic data along the route.<p>As for now, imagine the years of experience each technology has being combined into one super-driver. I know it's not that simple - each company may be representing the data differently - but I don't expect that to be an issue that couldn't resolve itself. Couldn't this significantly push this tech forward? (Note: I don't have the answer, this is my suspicion. I'm hoping some discussion could highlight situations where this has had a bad result, if any).