Unlike Uber, they appear to talk about a real carsharing system, as opposed to a taxi service with a lower entry barrier.

The prices will be much lower since we are talking about the marginal cost of adding another passenger to an already happening trip - and with full info on where people are going, Waze effectively has an endless supply of trips that are happening, it's just a matter of displaying a pop-up "Hey, Alex is going to the same place as you, do you want to give him a ride for 5$?". So the actual support required will be minimal to zero, it's just a software app to simplify what people already do, not a full transport service.

> So the actual support required will be minimal to zero, it's just a software app

Sigh... Where can one start with this? It’s like trying to argue with flat-earthers, where logic and infinite ost experience don’t matter.

That's not particularly constructive, although I don't disagree with you here. If you have experience here, what has it told you?

Eventually one of the 1000 or so Alexes is going to grope somebody.

There is no such thing as software which interacts with humans that doesn’t require maintenance. On top of that, you can’t coordinate people to do things without incurring some degree of liability for their actions, and humans are capable of some pretty horrible actions when you put enough of them together.

Decentralised services mitigate the somebody taking liability for the coordination.

You just described the pure software world solution.

What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin?

What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope the driver?

You absolutely need actual support, it's not going to be minimal-to-zero. Both the driver and the passenger need to be able to pick up a phone number and speak to a real human being who can resolve some sort of issue.

The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc.

The pure software world exists from Google's perspective, they provide zero support and then it's just a matter of individual choice if you want to use the service or not.

Google can go a long way into making this significantly safer than random pick-up: you can select female only drivers or riders, only riders from your area, they can implement a minimal account age that uniquely identifies the wazer simply via ride history - even if they use an anonymous login and fake credit card data, and so on.

It's a bit harder to protect against rogue riders since they need to be able to use the app immediately, but still, phone number and credit card verification is much better the letting a random stranger into your car. If not too intrusive, they could even ask riders for a frontal picture that the driver can verify and that remains on record. So for people who would carpool anyway, it's a much better option.

> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc.

It's not so simple. Normally people, at least in cities, rarely hitchhike or take up hitchhikers. The goal here is to make it acceptable, and naturally greatly increase the frequency this is happening. This can be reasonably taken as an endorsement by Google to the driver/passenger, because it is -- they want this to happen more often, and are essentially saying "it's OK to hitchhike through our app". This means that they can reasonably be seen as taking part in the entire transaction and assuming some portion of the liability.

Read up on DC slug lines. We are talking 10,000's of people doing this daily with very minor government support for the last 15+ years. Mostly awareness and signage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

>In the San Francisco Bay Area, with the third-busiest rush hour,[3] casual carpooling occurs on Interstate 80 between the East Bay and San Francisco. As of 1998, 8,000 to 9,000 people slugged in San Francisco daily.[5] However, after bridge tolls were levied on carpool vehicles in 2010, casual carpooling saw a significant decline and etiquette became more uncertain

Woah boy I have racked up so many toll violations, I just assumed I didn't have to pay a toll for HOV. Wonder why they haven't mailed them through?

Smaller toll but still a toll. Do you not have a fastrak. I can't understand how anyone in the bay area who drives doesn't have a fastrak it saves so much time. You don't even need to keep it with you just register the license plate with the website.

I don't have a fastrak because I falsely assumed that HOV always has free tolls (except at the Bay Bridge), and I drive a motorcycle.

I was reading an article about 10 years ago about this ride-sharing in the DC metro area. We discussed how a smartphone app could make all this much easier and smoother. We didn't follow up on it back then...

It wasn't (and won't likely to be) the only big missed opportunity in my life.

Survivorship bias makes us forget about the other dozens of "taxi/carpooling apps" that did not succeed.

"The Upstarts" [0] talks about some of those.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Upstarts-Airbnb-Companies-Silicon-Cha...

To your benefit - it's not as easy as to take a few weekends and to code an ride-sharing app to app store.

Lots more business planning and resources are required to pull it off.

I have to think that putting it into an app is meant to encourage people who would otherwise never do this to do so -- the same way people happily use Uber who would never dream of using a gypsy cab under normal circumstances (and passengers then get upset/surprised/complain if Uber doesn't satisfy the expectations their implicit endorsement creates).

It's been happening in Houston for 15+ years, too. I suspect any city with decent HOV lanes and bad traffic has slug lines.

I think it's more like 40+ years, ever since the HOV lane went in.

"In practice, slugging involves the creation of free, unofficial ad hoc carpool networks"

Unofficial is the operative word here.

"Slugging"

What a charming name.

/s

You are pushing the argument a bit by assuming that people will treat it as something different than hitchhiking simply because it's via an app and in-city. There is no reason to asume that - but I do agree that false advertising from Google and failure to properly inform the users of the risks could expose Google to such a liability. The answer is not to add customer support, but to be honest with the users regarding the risks- and make large commissions in the process.

I think that people will almost certainly treat it as something different than hitchhiking, and Google wants them to. In fact, the service depends on it, because if people treated it the same, it would happen at the same frequency as it happens today -- which is hardly at all -- and the service will fail.

I think you're overestimating how much people can and do rely on Uber support when something goes wrong in an UberPool.

And underestimate people's willingness assume all the risks with carpooling with a stranger. I see people lined up for a shared carpool to the DC suburbs every day.

I contact Lyft and Uber support multiple times a year for various reasons, and I barely even use Line/Pool.

Shit happens. If a company is acting as facilitator and money-handler, they are going to get a lot of customer queries, and they are going to alienate most of them if they aren't prepared for it.

Do they do something more than give you a full or partial refund after the fact? I think Google can handle that too.

> You are pushing the argument a bit by assuming that people will treat it as something different than hitchhiking simply because it's via an app and in-city.

Are you suggesting that Google will market this as "it's just like hitchhiking, and is no different, don't @ me"?

> There is no reason to asume that

Sure there is, the main one being a public reputation for your prospective hitchhiker that you can check before deciding to pick them up.

"Casual Carpooling" at least used to be popular - you can read about it here: http://sfcasualcarpool.com/

Originally, for the East Bay to San Francisco trips, cash would not exchange hands because the Bay Bridge toll was waived for carpools. Now that the carpool toll is $2.50, my understanding is that it's a little more awkward.

it's still very popular, with a suggested donation of $1 per passenger. not awkward at all (I take it almost every day)

You are assuming hitchhiking is unsafe. It may be less safe than other forms of transportation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's especially unsafe. News outlets love stories about strangers abducting children because of how they draw eyeballs, but that happens to be extremely rare. But the anecdotal examples make you overestimate the risk of it.

And this is safer than hitch-hiking. The vast majority of people planning on assaulting strangers dont want to leave electronic trails so they can be easily found.

I somewhat recently learned about the propaganda from the FBI in the 60's and 70's to discourage hitchhiking. (possibly a covert assault on civil rights protesters hitching to rallies) It's easy to be scared of failure, suffering or what can go wrong... but not everyone is excited about what could go right.

Ultimately, I believe a big reason why hitchhiking is not very prevalent is that both the cost of air travel and vehicle ownership has gone down significantly over time. (adjusted for inflation)

> I somewhat recently learned about the propaganda from the FBI in the 60's and 70's to discourage hitchhiking.

Would love to read more about that... Got anything trustworthy?

I think the point is: As long as the person is with you, they share the fuel cost. You already decided to use a car, so you're driving, but the other person is now able to split the cost with you and hitch a ride.

Unfortunately the reality of the situation is: Even with Uber / Lyft there are instances of groping and rape. Once you are in someone's car they have power over you. They don't have to stop. They can threaten to crash the car, etc. And without any vetting this is a risky move.

This can absolutely not survive without some sort of support.

While others say "people already hitchhike" the truth is yes, and there's no liable company so people get paranoid and such. This app will enable a bigger scale which causes more issues.

> Normally people, at least in cities, rarely hitchhike or take up hitchhikers.

Hitchhiking is also illegal in most states.

Speaking as a former hitchhiker who used it to travel through 39 states, it's actually legal almost everywhere. What is illegal is to stand in the path of travel of a roadway, and in some locations standing on the shoulder is also illegal. But on a sidewalk, onramp, etc, as long as you're not physically in the road, it's almost always ok.

Some exceptions being Utah, Delaware, New Jersey, and maybe another, where you're specifically banned from soliciting rides using signage.

Sadly, the best resource for seeing what the laws are in each state was digihitch.com, which went down in 2014, I believe when the founder passed. Quite sad, they had pamphlets for every state with relevant laws written down -- it came in handy a few times when police stopped me. They were always respectful, but I did have to clarify the laws a few times, since it's clear if read, but not widely understood.

are you looking for this: https://web.archive.org/web/20140220034659/http://www.digihi...

No.

Hitchhiking is technically illegal in 4 states and rarely enforced even there.

http://hitchwiki.org/en/United_States_of_America#Police.2FLa...

I'd love to hear the justification for this.

I encourage you to read the reviews on the Waze app. "User keeps sending me lewd messages and can still see my trips even though I blocked him" "the system automatically deactivated my account and I couldn't contact anyone".

Sure it's early days and these hiccups will be reduced. But they'll never completely go away and you need human support to resolve these situations. Better filters and software intelligence will help, but they won't be trained enough or effective for a long time.

Implementing proper features to block a user is the first thing a social app needs to get right. Esp if you can physically track users. That's basically an invitation for stalkers.

> The pure software world exists from Google's perspective, they provide zero support and then it's just a matter of individual choice if you want to use the service or not.

This is something only an engineer would say. In the real world, once you provide a service, you absolutely are on the hook— both ethically and in the mind of the average consumer— for providing some level of service when it goes wrong. “Don’t like, don’t use” is not an acceptable answer, especially in a business like this where outcomes like robbery, rape, etc. are all possible.

> once you provide a service, you absolutely are on the hook— both ethically and in the mind of the average consumer— for providing some level of service when it goes wrong.

The moral and legal liability has precise limits. No software application or payment service could be ever expected to prevent any and all criminal activity in relation to it's use. Google is on the hook, but to a more much limited extent than you suggest, namely they need to do their due diligence in providing a safe service, as far as it's reasonably expected, and inform the users as to the limitations of the service and that the other participants are not endorsed or vetted by Google. That is a level of risk and limited liability they can legally offer, because the much riskier anonymous hitchiking is generally legal.

Google is absolutely not responsible for the rapes and muggings perpetrated by users of Adwords or Waze.

>Google is absolutely not responsible for the rapes and muggings perpetrated by users of Adwords or Waze.

If you or a family member used Waze Carpool, and got raped or murdered, are you going to sit there quietly and say "oh well, not Google's fault"?

As a engineer providing a software solution, it's great to sit in an office desk and say "there are precise legal limits", it's exact, precise, formal, and correct. Like a math problem almost. This is the exact line.

But imagine if you used somebody else's service, and you got raped. Or your family member got raped. Are you really going to not sue and let the newspapers know what happened? It's not just 1's and 0s anymore, it becomes a moral/emotional issue.

Could ask the same question to an auto engineer who's relative dies in a car crash. Should he quit his job, should we ban cars?

While auto safety is important, cars save much more lives than they take - and the economic opportunities they enable drastically change the median quality of life in societies where they are used.

In the same way, carsharing is not an enabler of crime, it's much safer than hitchhiking and would be a drastic improvement in the lives of people who are economically dependent of hitchhiking.

A good example is the Highway of Tears murders - in the last 40 years 20 to 40 women disappeared or were found dead hitchhiking the same stretch of highway in Canada. They were typically underprivileged and of aboriginal origins, and lacking other forms of transportation. The vast majority of cases remained unsolved.

Should something like internet carsharing had been in use by a victim, the police would have had acces to a vast trove of forensic data, including their last match to a known Waze user, identified by credit card, phone fingerprint and cell tower and GPS location history, as well as the victims own location trail up to the point where her phone is taken away/shut down. While a determined high tech killer could operate with these constraints, it's orders of magnitude more difficult. A determined killer is by definition unstoppable by any service or company.

Yes but if your relative dies in a car crash, you can sue for damages. And you probably would, even if, say, you signed some kind of safety agreement before buying the car waiving the right to sue.

Just because the law "precisely" says it's not the carmaker's fault, doesn't mean the carmaker is not "on the hook" or share some of the legal burden.

I am not saying that we should ban cars or ban carsharing. I am saying, if you offer carsharing as a software service, and something goes wrong during that service, you are involved legally. It's not a precise "on/off" switch like launching a software product.

They ought to blame the murderer/rapist since people using an app to connect individual consumers aren't employees or customers of said business. They will probably try to blame whomever has the deepest pockets but that doesn't mean that we ought to or that the law will.

Weak legal arguments aside, if Google allows criminals or even just bad drivers/passengers to use the app then people are going to lose their trust in it and stop using it.

Criminals, bad drivers, and bad passengers probably all use casual carpooling opportunities, yet those continue to operate in many urban areas. With even minimal attention to the problem, any app-based solution will have better opportunity to identify and filter out those problems, so while it's a potential issue, I think it's unlikely to be particularly problematic.

If the app is aiming to making carpooling more accessible, you will see an increase in occurrence of these issues.

The point I'm driving at is that it's still a marketplace and it comes with all the same standard hazards that apply to any marketplace. There are disputes and exceptions that have to be managed. Machines are not good at that yet.

Casual carpooling opportunities don't have enormously wealthy corporations behind them.

Setting the support obligation or morality questions aside for a moment (though I'm on the side of "by facilitating and profiting from this, you accept some responsibility for the quality of that facilitation"), that big difference is still critical: suing the operator of a neighborhood carpool mailing list or somesuch has limited yield. Suing Google has potentially massive yield. So a corporation should think about that sort of risk, just like they would the PR risks, etc, of letting it be an unregulated wild west.

Your position sounds a lot like "light or even largely-community-based self-moderation will be enough" and yet platforms like Twitter and Reddit that have attracted some large controversies and PR shitshows even without real money or real physical harm being involved. Heck, "don't read the comments" is standard internet advice to the point of being cliche.

> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc.

If you shift a large enough volume of traffic into that mode of transportation and externalize 'support' to emergency services then you are taking a free ride on a scarce resource. At a minimum there should be a first tier of support within the company offering the service, if only to serve as a mechanism to immediately halt providing the service to or from that particular passenger or driver until the matter has been dealt with.

That's only true if the service is likely to induce behavior that require such intervention - otherwise it's absolutely ok, for example, to call a public ambulance when a taxi customer gets sick, as oposed to arranging private insurance for your customers.

There is no proof ridesharing would induce criminality, quite the contrary, it's a much safer alternative to random hitchhiking.

Waze has some sort of social integration. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you could scope things to some extended network.

I’d be happy giving a fellow student or employee of my company a lift, but probably less likely to give random members of the public.

Completely agree with this; not only are you more likely to share a common origin or destination, but it also becomes an opportunity to meet someone new within your network.

> Google can go a long way into making this significantly safer than random pick-up: you can select female only drivers or riders,

So I can choose to ride with only people of my approved gender? What about my approved age ranges? Or races?

> Google can go a long way into making this significantly safer than random pick-up: you can select female only drivers or riders

This specific example will likely never happen. It's such a can of worms, even before you get to people purposefully misrepresenting themselves on their profiles and creeping people out.

> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc.

So how do you keep the bad drivers/passengers from using the app again?

This should be taken care of once we start implementing a people rating system similar to the one seen in Black Mirror's Nosedive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive

It depends whether you see Waze as a transportation service or not. Many European regulators would see this as a paid transportation service. And then Google has to deal with customers who were not satisfied with any part of the service.

From the site:

"Make a little money" - paid service, maybe even considered a part-time employment

"Get there quicker" - transportation service.

> it's going to need to staff entire buildings with agents if it doesn't want to completely piss off a nascent user base

That part from the original comment explains it though. I'm already pretty pissed at Google for them not being available at all while some music company is adding claims to all my videos. This is just annoying, but being groped by a person that a Google app set me up with would be infinitely worse.

I admittedly haven't had much experience on the other side but would it be possible to use the identity system that AirBnB uses to "vouch" for people?

This is exactly how Uber turned into a taxi service. They tried ridesharing, it turns out that people in cars do sketchy things and piss each other off, or worse.

I would rather see local grassroots organizations take on this project.

Lyft started as an offshoot of Zimride[0], a long-distance ridesharing platform.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimride

Similar to BlahBlahCar? Seems to be very popular in Europe.

Funny, just yesterday my Lyft driver pitched an idea exactly like this.

Cynically, if this is true, is it possible they switched because of the sheer profitability opportunities of the taxi-industry vs car-pooling.

Looking at this, i would think that if (and I'm certainly not saying it would/will happen) car-pooling became enabled and socially popular, it presumably both has naturally thinner margins than a taxi service, plus take out significant demand for individual trips from the likes of a taxi service.

Any references to stories/articles about their ride sharing efforts? Was it prior to their incorporation as UberCab or an experiment from further along?

It seems (from the pitch deck posted in another comment) that I had conflated "ride sharing" with "unregulated use of your car and free time to work for a cab service". It seems I was biased by all the "sharing economy" BS and jumped to a conclusion I shouldn't have jumped to.

ZimRide preceded UberCar. They largely targeted college campuses. Universities would pay them an annual subscription fee to enable ride sharing on their campus.

No links but I'm pretty sure they started off as actual ride-sharing, as in an app to help people car-pool. I'm assuming there was an "a-ha" moment when they realised the laws protecting state-authorized taxi services could be circumvented if you hailed the taxi via a phone app rather than by flagging them down.

Uber started as a better car service and had little to do with ride sharing. Go read their pitch deck. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/here-is-ubers-first-pitch-dec...

> This is exactly how Uber turned into a taxi service. They tried ridesharing, it turns out that people in cars do sketchy things and piss each other off, or worse.

Citation needed. My understanding is that the margins on actual ride-sharing, compared to being a taxi company, were too low for them.

And that they actually started as a black cab car company.

I don't doubt you but can you reference the source for this?

I'm actually kind of fascinated that an app that potentially sovles a problem via enabling a social solution is actually being phrase as a "software world solution".

More so, I'm amazed that what would previously have been deemed a "social issue" that you just have to deal with every day in dealing with other people in a car pool or society in general is now being framed as a commercial issue that needs customer support/someone to blame other than the people involved in the actual car.

Rather than being a software world solution, it seems we're heading further and further down the path where what is deemed a "solution" is the thing that tries to remove any element of social-interaction/community and places that in the context of commerical/legal interaction.

Have we really gotten to the point where its so radical to suggest that we survive without a commercial entity to blame when we car pool? And that this entity is doing something that helps us by enabling car pooling, rather than hurting us or which is responsible for what happens to us when we carpool?

Edit: I mean, the other thing about carpooling...these are people who have likely been:

a) have a verified form of identification b) commonly live and work in your own community c) will grow to commonly carpool with you

actually, there's an issue from the provider's point of view. After the initial contact and period of time...i need them in this as a third party...why exactly?

> What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car?

Guess you have to use some of that hard earned ridesharing money to deal with the occasional downside such as this. It's not just free money, and anyone that thinks in terms ot cash for ride and that's the only things to think of is naive. You've thought it these scenarios, other people should too, and take that into account when deciding if it's worth it.

> Or steals something from my car?

File a police report.

> What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going?

Let them out at the first feasible opportunity, as long as there is some infrastructure (or they accept the location). Let them deal with finding transport from there.

> Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin?

Let them out as above, they can secure additional transport on their own.

> What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope the driver?

File a police report.

> You absolutely need actual support, it's not going to be minimal-to-zero. Both the driver and the passenger need to be able to pick up a phone number and speak to a real human being who can resolve some sort of issue.

You do need support, but clear and up-front expectations can reduce that quite a bit. I agree Google is horrible at this, and hasn't shown themselves as able to supply even the minimal amount of support I noted above.

I'm honestly surprised that Google doesn't create separate companies to handle actual product sales (and keep the Google name for the product if they feel the need) just to get past this horrible part of their culture. They just can't support anything adequately. Then again, we keep using their products even with this crappy support, so it's not like the market is punishing them enough to make them care. :/

> > What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going?

> Let them out at the first feasible opportunity, as long as there is some infrastructure (or they accept the location). Let them deal with finding transport from there.

Nope, gp was talking about getting picked up by someone who changes mind. You can't let them out, it's their car.

Oh. Drop the passenger of at an appropriate interim location, and you're forced to fund part or all of their subsequent trip accommodations to their original destination.

And suddenly we are back to the human help desk again.

Who is going to decide what is reasonable cost for covering the replacement trip. Is a bus ticket ok? cab ride? limo? Should the cost of time be counted for?

Reasonable cost is something you would define through policy, and would likely be based on percentage of trip traveled, initial cost, and some percentage as a premium. Even in human staffed companies this isn't left entirely to the discretion of the person handling the case.

I 's not entirely simole, but let's not act like it's impossible either. People use Google apps and services with shitty support all the time, because Google is fairly good at reducing the times you need support and also because they are pretty good at saying "you pay $X, we provide Y, and Z is what you can expect if there's a problem, and if you don't like that, go find a competitor."

Make breaking the contract painful on both parties, and hopefully it will be rare. In the case where it happens, you try to make sure the normal penalty covers it, and where it doesn't you eat the cost and look at why it failed and fix it if you can.

These things could happen, but since the product/service is about carpooling, I tend to pick up the same people repeatedly. Any time you work with a new person, there is a risk. That risk goes down significantly with repeated rides. I initially had issues with pick up and drop off location, due to Waze letting you pick how many minutes you're willing to walk. With new riders, I have a chat before accepting so they understand the nuances of Waze Carpool.

That's probably a similar, if not the same problems that AirBnB has to deal with regularly; how do they solve it? IIRC though, for that one it's more of an outlier - most people are decent people.

Good point.

I think it’s intersting that you go to medium for even small claims is a phone call.

I find the level of support we can get over chat to be pretty good nowadays, my bank, insurance, company HR also deals with all non lofe threatening issues by mail and messaging only.

We’re finaly getting away from a phone centric world, and I feel the service is actualy better while cheaper and more efficient.

I specifically chose "phone call" because it's an instant response, and you're certain you're talking to a human being - someone who can empathize, and who can elevate, and who's focused on you, right now.

A chat box? That can be a bot. That can be someone in a call center in Hyderabad or Abilene. That can be someone juggling five conversations at the same time, whose ability to escalate starts and ends at a button, the effects of which they don't even really understand.

We are not. I consistently choose phone support because it is nearly always superior.

> What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car?

You clean it up and make a decision about whether you'd pick them up again.

> Or steals something from my car?

You call the police and tell them who that person is and where they live.

> What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going?

You tell them to drop you off and you don't ride with them again.

> Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store

If you're fine with it, you go along with it. If you're not find with it, see above.

> or back home to grab the laptop they forgot

See above.

> or to score some heroin?

If you like heroin, ask them to pick you some up too. If not, see above.

> What happens when the driver gropes me?

Get out, report them to the police, don't ride with them again.

> Or I grope the driver?

Please don't do that.

Is it really Waze's job to resolve these issues beyond blacklisting users?

> > Or I grope the driver?

> Please don't do that.

Do you think that's going to be Waze's official FAQ entry on this topic?

From a PR standpoint, absolutely yes.

For these reasons I would seriously like to see is a carpooling system for regular trips, e.g. to and back from work. Intuitively, at least for me, that has fewer risks.

These are exceptions. If they happen, they are your problem. And if they eventually cost Google money, then that's no problem because they are exceptions anyway. So that's how Google gets away with it.

Wow what a skit!

Oh hai! I’m going to the city center!

Ooooh what a nicer phone charger than I have

Oh shoot I forgot my laptop can we go back it will only take a second

OH! I forgot - please stop at 123 B street - don’t worry it’s on the way... this will only take a sec!

Wait! I said I was going to Blake square, but now I’m going to jack square! - I’m so sorry, but don’t worry I’ll rate you five stars!

They have probably worked those issues out by dogfooding this internally already, don't you think?

It's not like they just thought it up and didn't test it out internally as they are wont to do. Those issues were likely discovered and have mitigation. Googliness only gets people to be nice to a point.

> They have probably worked those issues out by dogfooding this internally already, don't you think?

They absolutely could not work out the problem of being, e.g., abused by a driver, internally. By being employees of the company that provides the service, they have an automatic customer service hotline by way of HR.

If I catch a ride to work with my coworker Jeremy, by using a company-supplied app explicitly for us to test, and Jeremy gropes me, you bet your ass HR is going to hear about it as soon as I hang up with the police department.

You make a good point. However, you imply that the watchful eye of HR would prevent this happening and yet Google is not sex-crimes free. I grant that it may show up in lower numbers but these things will show up in a years-long program.

There's also the general stigma against, e.g., stealing from a coworker, or vomiting in a coworker's car, or being a shitty driver.

>> the marginal cost of adding another passenger to an already happening trip

As minor as it is, going to pick someone else up and take them with me is pretty big inconvenience, especially in time.

1 hour of commuting could cost something like 30$ in gas (Europe), vechile depreciation and tolls. Sharing that cost 50-50 or 33-33-33 for a 5-10 minutes delay would yield a 120-180$ / hour rate for the delay period. Very few people could afford to turn that down, it's the average income of an whole hour of work compressed into 5 minutes.

You're not going to get anything like those figures. See blablacar.com for current rates

In many jurisdictions, accepting payment for a ride causes you to be a taxi service, and regulated like one. I wonder how Waze would deal with this!

still going to run awry of the recent push by many jurisdictions to shut down or muzzle Uber. If anything many politicians will just see it as and end run / play of words.

Now the fun would come when participants are also in their local cities ride share program. We (Atlanta) have apps for Ride Share and Carpooling already. However the state did run car pooling / ride sharing incentives you could sign up for. I would assume other cities had similar, the key difference here is the driver was not charging. Also, be damn careful your insurance limits and restrictions if you ever do either method.

If this is the logic behind Waze Carpool, they are SERIOUSLY misguided. If I own a car and and I’m driving to work, my privacy and security during my commute is worth a lot more than $5. No way I’m picking up randos and sitting in silence with them for an hour for a measly coffee.

I think one of the key benefits for some users is that they can use the HOV lane and save a good chunk of time every day.

And many people aren't like you - they might make minimum wage and gas is a big expense for them.

Now I wouldn't do it for the reasons you mentioned but we must remember that we're a fortunate group.

I've only used Waze Carpool as a rider and mostly on 60 min+ long trips, but most of the drivers I had were just tired of the long commute and looking for someone to entertain them. They were tired of audiobooks and podcasts.

Even though I was going ~20 miles in the carpool lane most of the time, the 10 minutes they saved would be wiped out by the 15-20 minutes they had to go out of their way to pick me up and drop me off. Everyone told me I was the only one going that far, most of the carpools they could only use the carpool lane for 3-4 miles which didn't save any time.

Other than that, I had two drivers who wanted to do their part to save the earth by carpooling which were fine. I also had two drivers who were nice but just really wanted the gas money. Those drivers both had really old cars that were dirty with trash and seemed poorly maintained. While they were ok drivers, I really did question if the tires were bald or what would happen if we were in an accident.

I would have used this every weekend I drove home from college (~3 hours), back when I was in college. Especially if I could just get paired with someone on campus going to some city along the way, but I'd also be down to pick people up on cities along the way as well.

1+ hour trips sound like a perfect opportunity for this. I'm a kind of get-in-at-the-last-minute guy at work, but I'd probably also pick up a person or two per week on the drive home, when I don't mind a little delay.

Yup, and think of the caliber of car and driver that would appeal to.

'Calibre'?

People without spare money are of the wrong 'calibre'?

We weren't all born with latte money to spare. A CEO, brain surgeon or astronaut might have had a shitty car and been happy for an easy $5 when they were in grad school. Calibre my ass.

If the carpooling passengers could be "randos" that someone may be worried about, the carpooling drivers could be "of the wrong calibre" that someone may be worried about as well.

When you put it that way, I start to think Amazon should get into this business. I'm sure everyone has one bad customer experience incident with them, yes, but overall they're one of the highest rated for customer experience.

Then Amazon would say "Hey, while you're on your way there, mind taking a few packages with you?"

Now that I think about it, Amazon would be perfect to do it.

I can't remember the last Amazon package I got that wasn't on of their contract, on-demand drivers. Amazon already gives them packages and the optimal route to take and a pretty good estimate of how long that'll take the driver. They could use that and have the driver pick up/drop off people along their route and know a pretty good time frame the driver would arrive.

> I can't remember the last Amazon package I got that wasn't on of their contract, on-demand drivers.

At the moment, there are 10 Amazon packages not yet delivered to my house - 4 haven't updated the computer with their shipping information, 2 UPS, 1 USPS, 2 AMZL US, and 1 from a Foreign Post.

> Amazon already gives them packages and the optimal route

Optimized not Optimal route.

Optimal route or optimized route? I was under the impression that calculating an optimal route was NP-Hard and not feasible to do at scale.

Yup. I've had a number of bad experiences (packages not arriving, wrong thing delivered, etc), but every time, Amazon has made it right. They consistently produce a great customer experience.

They just figured out that cost_to_resolve_complaints < cost_of_lost_customer.

Once you make that leap, and commit (via support permissions / manuals / budget) to making that happen, it's a better experience overall.

Not least because then it frees you as a business to what you should be focusing on. E.g. "We paid out $x million because of damaged packages. What can we do in the warehouse side to fix this?"

My issue is usually amazon sending the wrong item, or counterfits, dispite their occasionall asinine packaging of my items. That is, assuming the seller bothers to correctly list the item. But they seem to be doing little about any of it.

For instance, I recieved 2 vacuum tubes last night. (I ordered 4), and they came jammed in a huge box with no padding on 2 sides. Already scheduled for return. My return rate must be 1 in 10 these days.

Is their warehouse overhead so low as to cover this long term? I honestly don't know. But I also know I would stop doing biz wih them in a heartbeat if returning things was difficult. I did so with ebay/paypal nearly a decade ago and am happier for it.

> My return rate must be 1 in 10 these days. Is their warehouse overhead so low as to cover this long term?

The flip side of this is that my wife and I have returned 4-5 packages over the past year, out of 500+...

Maybe you buy from bad merchants selling stuff via amazon? Its possible your choices are leading you on average to have a bad experience.

Its likely that your experience isn't even remotely typical

I've contacted all of theses services independently and had positive customer support experiences: Google Wifi, Fi, Google Store (phones), and Drive. Time frame is last couple of years.

I've had the opposite experience, but this was probably further back then you. I remember trying to call Google to get info about Google maps and it was just a run around. I spent 3 hours trying to figure out who controlled the map tiles behind Apples Maps powered by Google and got nowhere.

Even if you go to Google's contact page now[1] it's obscure and the first thing they try to do is shuttle you off to forums or a boilerplate FAQ. You can't run a consumer business like that.

Google is great at building pure tech products like Google Search and Gmail, but not so good when it's a product where you might have to talk to a human being.

[1] - https://www.google.com/contact/

Just going to point out that for pixel phones for example, you type in "pixel customer support" on google, click on the "contact us" button, and then answer a couple of (really easy) questions and are given the option to use an online chat or a phone call with support.

(I work at Google, but I had the same experience before I worked there). I think the best way of putting it is that (the consumer part of) maps is a library book, and that you wouldn't expect phone support for a library book. You would expect phone support for a product you buy, and you get that. (Google's service for pretty much all of their paid products is decent, or at least it exists). Did/does Microsoft offer phone support for their free software products? I just looked for help with outlook, and got directed to...a chatbot.

Perhaps the difference is that Wifi, Fi, and the store in general are all product you pay for, whereas maps is not?

Yeah that's a possibility. As I mentioned, I haven't really tried to interact with Googles customer service in the past few years so maybe/hopefully it's a lot better now than it was then.

Until some algo decides to delete your universal Google account that powers everything from this company by request of some other bot or by some totally opaque procedure with penalties and so-called-AI detection of your activity. And the only thing you can do is nothing really. Just google such cases, they happen regularly. Of the more insane ones was the musician had his track used by BigCorp as a fair use or something and then automated algo of BigCorp send DMCA takedown to Google and it just banned legitimate song author and there is zero ways to appeal it.

I would've refrained from sharing if you hadn't mention project Fi. Me calling in to get my Nexus 5x fixed was such a piss poor experience that I would never consider them for mobile service again.

That's crazy, because I had the exact opposite experience. Everytime I've called Project Fi support, I've gotten great help, and they replaced my 5x with a refurbished one for free very quickly when it got stuck in a reboot loop.

Its hit and miss, of 4 people I know of that owned Nexus 5x's at one point or another, two have hit the bootloop issue, one got a free pixel 2 as a replacement, and the other got told to pound sand.

I agree that Google has a customer-service problem, and would also note that it seems to extend from their consumer tech to their enterprise offerings.

For example, when Gitlab decided to transition from the cloud, we saw Google Engineers jump in the discussion thread unprompted, criticizing Gitlab's decision and not-very-subtly telling Gitlab to follow up over email. Obviously, these low-level employees weren't directed to act in concert, but it seems like they came from a culture where the customer knows nothing and is always wrong.

This will probably be very cheap just to cover gas. They probably wont do customer support and tell driver/rider they are on their own. Since the rider pays up front they have their Identity and cash up front.

I don't see Uber and Lyft competing against this service since the driver isn't going to make a living. On the other hand this will take a lot of rides from other ride share services.

It looks like it will at max be the government mileage rate to cover gas and depreciation (currently 54 cents)

The reason I wouldn't is Google's obsession with building US-only businesses (Example: Project Fi). Uber is worldwide and is a huge timesaver whenever I travel within Europe.

(Edit: Had to reword my example since people just love taking stuff out of context.)

There are many great examples of Google failing to internationalise, but Google Fi requiring a US billing address is not one of them.

Fi is a domestic cell phone service, it provides international roaming as a bonus to its US customers - at much increased cost (to them) compared to domestic service. I wouldn't be surprised if roaming permanently was a violation of their terms of service (it is for Three in the UK, who provide a similar perk)

You can of course criticise Google for not launching domestic service in countries across the world, but in fairness to them, that's not a small problem.

You're making my point. They made a domestic cell phone service and, despite the service working worldwide, failed to bring it to other countries.

You're ignoring my point. The costs internationally are far higher than they are domestically. The roaming agreements they have with those networks almost certainly prohibits full time use by a customer. Sometimes there are valid reasons to not launch a service, particularly when the whole point of it is to be low cost!

I agree with criticism when Google doesn't internationally launch something they control entirely (say, the Pixel phone). But this is not that.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, I'm not claiming there isn't a valid line of reasoning that gets us to the end state. Of course there are reasons and of course some of them might be outside Google's control.

“working” in this sense could mean “operating at a loss”.

Uber is operating at a loss worldwide. So, yes, "working" could mean "operating at a loss", it's still a valid example.

Also it's not like Fi was my entire point. My actual point was that Google has an utter crap track record at launching stuff outside the US.

What percentage of googles US customers spend any significant portion of their time traveling in Europe? Hint I'm pretty sure its less than 1%.

But Europe has a lot of people (nearly the same population as the US) that are potential customers. Ridesharing in Europe is quite popular but apps are insufficient. Uber is banned in some countries. So Waze should work well if it gets proper support.

100% agree. I would never trust Google for any customer / retail effort.

What happens if the driver rapes somebody, or more so the passenger disappears in thin air.

Google doesn’t want to take any responsibility or have any support / background checks.

I’d stay a million miles away where a human is merely just an entry in their database.

Doesn't that eliminate anything that organizes people for anything? Your requirement seems to eliminate Meetup, all dating apps, Craigslist, or meeting a stranger for almost any other reason ever.

Here's the support contact form. Some folks should try it and report back with their experience as to response time and quality.

https://support.google.com/waze/carpool/contact/ridewith_hel...

I had problems with my google home mini controlling my android tv and went to the help page for it. A chatbox appeared and for about an hour a support agent talked me through various things to try (the only thing that worked was factory data reset on the TV). Pretty sure it was not a bot, unless they've gotten really good.

If it was a bot, would you be mad?

no, I'd be pretty impressed.

I think GOOG is perfectly capable of upping their game to- and above UBER/Lyft levels.

Even if it would require unthinkable religious sacrifice of actually providing live human support from GOOG side.

gasp! humans??!

"To help us serve you better, please say the reason for your call..." - this provokes violence

Used Waze Carpool about 30 times 6 months ago. I was actually pleasantly surprised at the level of support. I reported two software bugs in detail and they did get back to me quickly both times and we had a fairly complex discussion.

I actually read the Waze t&c when I signed up many years ago, the lack of privacy is astounding, they have pretty much all of your location data from driving which did make me feel more secure.

Depends on the product with Google. Purchased the Google WiFi and support was excellent. Human with a phone call that was able to get answers.

Sounds like their monetisation strategy. But there are issues with network intermediaries' structural moneymaking strategies. The French startup blablacar.com is the biggest existing player in the market for real ridesharing, at least in Western Europe. And It does take some customer service to run these things. I've used it a fair amount.

The biggest issue is that to protect their revenue cut, they track and censor messages between members of their platform until the ride is booked so they don't pay cash.

Also, they force bookings to a specific time, and so you have to describe your journey on the comments, and so that way some passengers' attitude treat it like a cheap uber, and not a ride share.

Their Google Suite customer service is great, tried it multiple times and they immediately helped me and solved my problems. As far as I know their support is only good if you are actually paying for something.

The reason I would consider Google to legitimately compete with them are the following.

1. If they have issues with their system they will create a competitor to it internally.

2. They have the money to subsidize just like uber and lyft.

3. They are the company that could either perform a deal with Elon for his data or buy Tesla out.

4. Since no "contractor" that is employed by uber or lyft have any loyalty torward another it will just drive down prices even more. I'm not sure Uber could survive that or even lyft.

It always baffles me that a company based in a country as litigious as the US has gotten away with being so careless about Customer Care for so long.

The customer usually doesn't have sufficient money to be litigious.

Yes, but outsource to someone like SITEL to handle these. It's not like Microsoft staffs the phone directly.

What? This comment is ridiculous. Google has customer service on the scale of Amazon.

You are joking. That's like saying Amazon has AI service on the scale of google. No google customer service has unfortunately a very long way to go. Give google a million machines and it can train it to the nth degree. But solving silly human problems was never its strength.

Such statements (about customer support) are completely subjective though I'm not sure you can just fling that out there as a global truth. Project Fi, while perhaps an outlier, bucks your point.

What we've learned most at Scoop is that this is all about human experience. Commuters are regular people with regular, complicated lives - they have family obligations, schedules, meetings, work priorities, personal desires. Having accessible, thoughtful support is, to us, a critical part of that experience.

We believe that software can certainly scale your support efforts and solve a lot of the core problems / answer a lot of the questions. But commuting is an everyday, twice-a-day activity and having a place to go for questions and needs is natural.

Lyft and Uber displaced all the old carpool services, because professionals work better than amateurs

Maybe Waze does customer support as a sub-company of Google?

Google does decent support for their paid services. Free is different but paid tends to be decent.