Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

I&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>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.

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&#x2F;drivers is available to anyone with a decent line of credit.

My inner paranoid finds this interesting from the perspective of Google entering yet another domain where they have high accuracy data on the present&#x2F;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.<p>Can&#x27;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.<p>Even if (and perhaps even probably) Google weren&#x27;t doing this intentionally, they&#x27;ve already demonstrated through failing to encrypt their inter-DC connections how they&#x27;re becoming a massive single point of failure (remember Snowden showed us the NSA were tapping Google&#x27;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&#x27;ll simply never be comfortable with one company concentrating so much personal data affecting so many people.

Uber have struck me before as a bigger potential headache for Google than even Facebook were&#x2F;are, and I suspect this is all an effort to acquire them and drive the price down.<p>There is something about the automated dispatch at giant scale business which overlaps with the search as interface idea. &quot;Get me to [wherever]&quot; 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 &quot;What are the restaurants right now with 80% rating, tables available and will cost me less than $20 to get to?&quot; That&#x27;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.

Google seems unable to have a partner without eventually entering their market and becoming enemies. Apple before Android, Twitter before Google+ - I guess it&#x27;s inevitable with how many different industries Google tries to tackle. I think if this service is entirely defined by autonomous vehicles it&#x27;s really a complete different service than Uber. No more driver ratings or passenger ratings, all the same car type, and it&#x27;s own vast legal challenges

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&#x27;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&#x27;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.

If Google competes directly with a company they are invested in via GV they&#x27;re going to really damage the reputation of GV. Why would you accept investment from them if they&#x27;re going to get access to your private info and then turn around and screw you.

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&#x27;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.<p>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.

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&#x27;s hegemony is truly threatened.<p>(edit) The article suggest self driving cars, and by extension Google&#x27;s ridesharing service won&#x27;t be ready for 2-5 more years.

I&#x27;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.<p>And now this. I guess google is like &quot;well we got the hard part, self driving cars. Why not just go after this ourselves?&quot;<p>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&#x27;t use google maps), and set google as default software in the car web experience.<p>It seems greedy, arrogant, and unaligned with their core ways of making money. They&#x27;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?

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&#x2F;mi (or whatever the Standard Mileage Rate, or derivative thereof, is at the time).<p>Added with Express to overload deliveries to maximize utility (maybe offer riders a discount if they can make an express stop along the way...)

They&#x27;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.

Google replied to the Bloomberg article with a cryptic tweet.<p>&quot;@business We think you&#x27;ll find Uber and Lyft work quite well. We use them all the time.&quot;<p><a href="https://twitter.com/google/status/562392039459807232" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;google&#x2F;status&#x2F;562392039459807232</a>

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.

The key words are &quot;long term&quot;. I am concerned that these obstacles will not be overcome in &quot;3 to 5 years&quot;:<p>* &quot;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.&quot; [1]<p>* &quot;Another big problem for Google is the current cost of its driverless car, which is reportedly outfitted with a whopping $250,000 in equipment.&quot; [2]<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Google_driverless_car</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/21/3-reasons-google-incs-driverless-cars-will-hit-a-d.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fool.com&#x2F;investing&#x2F;general&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;21&#x2F;3-reasons-g...</a>

I&#x27;m sure this has been discussed on a different (uber&#x2F;lyft) thread but being a nyc&#x27;er and amazed at the prices of taxi medallions through the years, I&#x27;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.<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/upshot/new-york-city-taxi-medallion-prices-keep-falling-now-down-about-25-percent.html?_r=0&amp;abt=0002&amp;abg=1" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;08&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;new-york-city-taxi-...</a>

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?<p>Anyway, I&#x27;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&#x27;s iPhones in the earlier days)?

The very definition of being a victim of their own success

&gt; 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.<p>Not super related to this story, but I always have to wonder: why do powerful people join boards? What&#x27;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?

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.<p>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.<p>An Uber from Google could also be great too but their once clear idea of what they are is getting fragmented and that&#x27;ll show in the implementation and UX of Google Cabs.

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.

Makes a lot more sense now why they bought Waze. It wasn&#x27;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.

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.

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

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&#x27;t make economic sense for a company like Uber in any time horizon that it makes business sense to take into account now.

This concept seems like the next logical step for Google&#x27;s push for mapping&#x2F;autonomous vehicles. I think the most interesting challenge they&#x27;ll have going forward is dealing with the same union&#x2F;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.

Meanwhile, Uber is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to build self-driving cars: <a href="http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-mellon" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.uber.com&#x2F;carnegie-mellon</a><p>HN discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987441" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8987441</a>

I also don&#x27;t understand how this is news to anyone. The fact that Google wasn&#x27;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&#x27;s board wouldn&#x27;t notice this...

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 &quot;would you like the cab downstairs in 5 minutes?&quot;<p>Oh well; there goes Uber&#x27;s 50 billion dollars valuation...

Why don&#x27;t G just _block_ all Uber drivers from utilizing Google Maps, forcing them to an inferior Mapping&#x2F;Route product, lowering the quality of the Uber experience. (Only Uber&#x27;d a few times and I&#x27;m sure the drivers had G maps, but I may be wrong, I was surely drunk.)

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

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.

Shuld Facebook be afraid of Google Plus, and Amazon of Google App Engine?<p>Google wants to be everywhere, but it looks like it doesn&#x27;t have enough good developers.<p>I think Uber has chance to overcome Google, even if Google really decided to compete in this area.

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

Is there anything special about Uber, other than its brand?<p>How hard can it be to implement an Uber clone? Like a week?<p>What&#x27;s stopping anyone from entering this space? Is it technology? Marketing? Regulation? Trust? A secret sauce?<p>I&#x27;d love to understand.

Google proved that it can do logistic-heavy business with it&#x27;s Google Express. I&#x27;m sure if they do something like Uber, it would be as good as Google Express.

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?

Google General Services. Whatever you want done, whenever you want it done, Google will find someone to do it.<p><i>&quot;We also walk dogs.&quot;</i>

What are the chances that Google&#x27;s &quot;uber&quot; program will involve self-driving cars?

Meanwhile Google&#x27;s core search business is looking increasingly vulnerable.

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

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

Maybe it will be as good as Google&#x27;s Facebook compeditor

hahahahaha. Good luck google.<p>Anyone game to take longbets on Google building a successful product internally and scaling it with their traditional approach?<p>I&#x27;m always doubtful.

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&#x27;s access to their platform?

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

Do partners from google ventures have a board seat in Uber. If so, isn&#x27;t this a conflict, as Google is privy to all the internal strategy at Uber

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

Considering how many people hate Uber, I can&#x27;t imagine much sympathy being headed in their direction with this news.

Too bad Google Drive is taken.

THANK GOD!

Guber. I like it!

gg

Goober?

On the one hand, this is great. Competition and I couldn&#x27;t wish Google&#x27;s infinite pockets on a more terrible group of people.<p>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&#x27;ll never be able to talk to a human.

Your very own government sponsored taxi, less city and state control and now with improved tracking and information awareness! Red or blue pill, they&#x27;ll choke &#x27;em both down with a few sips of progress.

this is the least surprising news of the decade.

Good god, that&#x27;d we way too much power in the hands of a single company. They&#x27;re awfully close to Googlizing the world. Which I think is theoretically the closest civilization could get to utopia. But I&#x27;m not one for utopia.