Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada

Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by nora4 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:02AM (#16265314)

In general I think separating brands is a good idea. And I think, at least from technical perspective (not legal perspective) you shouldn't blame Google in case something goes bad, and rather Waymo. After all, the set of people running Google search or Android are very different from those managing the self-driving car project.

In some sense, a single entity Google is an illusion so best to avoid it.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by kyrra on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:09AM (#16266382)

There are other reasons to have separate entities beyond just legal issues. You can find some guesses out there as to who was responsible for Alpha or why Alphabet was created. But having other 'bets' provides some niceties around: earnings reporting, and spinning-off/selling entities if needed.

I'm also guessing it helps lure in potential leaders like John Krafcik (CEO of Waymo), because these execs can come onboard with the title of CEO rather than some VP within Google. (though, Krafcik joined Google 1 year before Waymo was founded).

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by nora4 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:44AM (#16266726)

That's right. It definitely helps hiring. In the executive level by fancier titles (rather be one of thousand VPs or CFO of Waymo, it's not even a comparison), but also at more junior levels. The usual marketing spiel there is we are like a "startup" but with the resources of a giant company.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by anonymfus on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:02AM (#16265796)

While they are different people, they are still the same money, and so Google's top managers still should be shamed for not investing enough in car safety.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by icebraining on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @03:35PM (#16268773)

*Alphabet's

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by notyourwork on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:56AM (#16266834)

I'm not sure the motivation was as ill-intentioned as you indicate. Yes they spun it off the but I don't think Google was re-structured into Alphabet (and subsidiaries) for this reason. Waymo is a self driving car business, Google is a search engine that provides online services. I don't think the two overlap in a way that makes sense to club their businesses together into one quarterly report.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by freehunter on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:04AM (#16265322)

And it worked. I must have missed the news when Waymo was spun off, because I didn't realize they were former Google folks until like... last week. I kept wondering where the hell these guys came from and how they suddenly had the money to come up with this super-advanced tech by themselves.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by adamking on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:27AM (#16266010)

Waymo employees are still Googlers effectively. They ride the same buses, eat in the same cafeterias, go to the TGIF meetings, etc.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by icebraining on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:11AM (#16265377)

Which articles about Waymo did you read that didn't mention its relationship with Google? I've yet to find one.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by freehunter on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:43AM (#16266150)

I'm not actually all that interested in self-driving cars at this point in their development (one can only be excited about a finite number of non-existent things at once), so I haven't been scouring articles, merely skimming (if even that). I've noticed the articles mention Google but figured they're mentioning it because Google also has a self-driving car they're working on.

TBH most of the articles I've read that mention Waymo are in relation to their lawsuit with Uber, and many of them say "Alphabet" and not "Google", and Alphabet still doesn't register as Google in my mind.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by lucb1e on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:20AM (#16265930)

One might have scrolled by headlines at some point and only subconsciously registered it.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by Grazester on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:24AM (#16265473)

When they were first spun off I wondered the same thing until I realised it was Google.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by notimetorelax on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:17AM (#16265424)

I think Google implemented one of the recommendations from Innovator’s dilemma. Where you want new ventures to be as independent from the parent company as possible. E.g. earnings of 1mm for parent company might be insignificant, but very desirable for a new product.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by JPKab on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:36AM (#16266097)

Google had to split into Alphabet divisions. Executive focus doesn't scale. Arguably, they did it too late, which is why they shit the bed so bad with Google Cloud, a technically superior offering that for years had poor support, no focus, and further fell behind AWS.

The printing press that is advertising there steals all the focus.

I'm convinced that if Waymo was a division of Google, they wouldn't be close to monetizing.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by jonknee on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:00AM (#16265300)

I think they just wanted something for investors to know by name outside of "other bets". Easier to say you're losing money investing in Waymo than their other more conventional money losing ideas.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by Cthulhu_ on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:11AM (#16265369)

It's probably for the best, same with the decision to change Google the megacorporation into Alphabet, with the Google brand focusing on search and internet.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by kowdermeister on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @08:59AM (#16265279)

Smart branding choice, but this is more or less obvious choice that most mega-companies do since forever.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by adrianmonk on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:37PM (#16270886)

All this reorganization happened after Ruth Porat took over as Google's new CFO. Prior to that, activities of the bread and butter money-making parts and more speculative parts of Google were not separated. This made investors nervous because while they viewed Google as a money factory, they also viewed it as run by crazy geniuses who might be wasting untold amounts of money on their fun research projects.

It seems Porat felt that Google would be in a better position by separating all that out so that things are more transparent to investors. If the stock price is any indication of how investors felt about that, she was right.

This doesn't mean that the Google brand couldn't still be applied to Waymo's activities, as is the case with Google Fiber, which kept the name. But it is not just Waymo that lost the Google brand in the process: Google X became just X, and Google Life Sciences became Verily.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by fiatjaf on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:05AM (#16265329)

What is wrong with that? If the cars fail, the search engine still works. Google is allowed to fail too, right?

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by zerostar07 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:29AM (#16266029)

"How about I park by this bakery so you can get some still-warm croissants"? Say 'OK Google please do not park in this bakery' 5 times to stop me. "

ads by AdSense(TM)

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by princess-aslaug on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:15AM (#16265889)

Hard to tell why initially you were downvoted so much. It's actually a very interesting comment for me, and a very clever strategy because if Waymo fails, while the press will say it's Google owned, it will still be felt as a separated entity. If it succeeds there will be a stronger link between the two brands in people's mind, and such link can be made stronger via marketing.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by alangpierce on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @12:27PM (#16267067)

I downvoted because it's a pretty strong and cynical-seeming accusation with little evidence. If it was suggested as a theory for the spinoff (or the entire Alphabet re-org?) or as one of the likely motivating factors, I think it would add to the discussion, but as-is, it's stated as fact that the sole reason for Waymo becoming its own company was to shield Google PR.

There are many Alphabet companies: Calico, CapitalG, Chronicle, DeepMind, Jigsaw, Nest Labs, Sidewalk Labs, Verily, Waymo. Is the idea that all of these were created under the same PR-driven motivation? I think it's much more reasonable that it was a legitimate re-org of a massive company, and that organizational units want their own identity and autonomy.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by zerostar07 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:26AM (#16266000)

> because if Waymo fails, while the press will say it's Google owned

Google has failed sooo hard in so many things it should be trading for $10 if it mattered.

The real effect is that, when google starts the in-car ad attack, people will act surprised.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by jacksmith21006 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:10AM (#16266387)

Google is about to pass Apple as the most valuable company in the world. So apparently Google is doing something correctly.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by Gargoyle on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @12:11PM (#16266947)

Yes, they're an excellent venue for ads on insurance, loans, mortgages, and mesothelioma. So like the badly made ads you see on local TV.

What an odd business.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by princess-aslaug on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:32AM (#16266060)

Good point but it rarely failed at something that was requiring such financial investment.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by dx034 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:03AM (#16266318)

Are you sure? What about Google+? Guess they spent at least a billion for that.

Google's search and ad network is paying (directly or indirectly) for everything. All other projects are just to keep people using their search and seeing ads on their platform.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by zerostar07 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:33AM (#16266082)

do we have a ballpark about the amount of money spent here? they have thrown a lot of money on other projects too i think .

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by princess-aslaug on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:00AM (#16266298)

I don't have numbers but I was thinking to spectacular failures like Google Wave or similar software projects. For sure they were also built by large teams and costed a non trivial amount of money, but this kind of research on autonomous vehicles, it's spawning a much larger amount of time and requires non common experts, there are tons of legal issues related, and you don't stop because people are not using it... it is a technological problem so you spend more and more resources trying to crack it. So I've the feeling that it's significantly more costly than other attempts that Google did in the past, but I've no numbers. I guess the Waymo numbers are simpler to get, because now it's a spin-off (but we should add all the money spent before the spin-off), but the cost of things like Wave are near impossible to obtain, I can imagine.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by meri_dian on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:59AM (#16265763)

That may not be the primary reason, but its definitely an added benefit to the decision.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by jacksmith21006 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:07AM (#16266358)

Think Google structured this way so could be spun out more easily. Would guess at some point if successful it will have it's own IPO.

With existing Google shareholders getting some ownership.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by advisedwang on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @04:43PM (#16269327)

Since the restructuring, it is Alphabet that is publicly traded. As a result Waymo is part of the publicly traded entity equally to Google. You can already invest in Waymo by investing in Alphabet.

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Re:Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada by jacksmith21006 on Thursday February 01, 2018 @07:50AM (#16281477)

That is true but what usually then would happen is successful businesses are then spun out and they do their own IPO.

Alphabet would retain controlling interesting. This is pretty common but not the only way. Sometimes parent company shareholders are given shares in the new company directly. So say every share of GOOG might be given a share of Waymo Inc for example. It is not always the case that the parent company keeps control.

It can also happen the other way where a sub is public and the parent does an IPO.

The structure of Alphabet is what gives the flexibility to do this.

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