> Given that I expect to never see waymo brand cars shuttling people around, most likely they will license out the tech to companies who deal with customers or to the car companies themselves.

I'm a big supporter of what Waymo is doing, but I've always thought this is real end game for them precisely because of the reasons you mentioned. Google is incredibly shy of anything that involves physical support and running a robotaxi service requires a lot of it along with operations/logistics. They are no Amazon.