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A comment on The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driving Simulation. Parent comment

Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by hungryhobbit on Friday February 06, 2026 @04:47PM (#46918585)
Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge.

Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it.

I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right?

Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.

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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by vinkelhake on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:07PM (#46918805)
Is there an equivalent to Godwin's law wrt threads about Google and Google Reader?

See also: any programming thread and Rust.

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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by scarmig on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:57PM (#46919333)
I'm convinced my last groan will be reading a thread about Google paper clipping the world, and someone will be moaning about Google Reader.
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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by tbossanova on Friday February 06, 2026 @06:46PM (#46919747)
“A more elegant weapon of a civilised age.”
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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by refulgentis on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:53PM (#46920178)
Lol, it seems obvious in retrospect, there really, really, needs to be.

Therefore we now have “Vinkel’s Law”

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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by wisty on Saturday February 07, 2026 @01:20AM (#46921763)
It's far from the only example https://killedbygoogle.com/
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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by burgreblast on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:28PM (#46919017)
I never get the moaning about killing Reader. It was never about popularity or user experience.

Reader had to be killed because it [was seen as] a suboptimal ad monetization engine. Page views were superior.

Was Google going to support minimizing ads in any way?

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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by theptip on Saturday February 07, 2026 @01:06PM (#46926013)
Right. Reader was not a case of apathy and failure to see the product’s value.

It was Google clearly seeing the product’s value, and killing it because that value was detrimental to their ads business.

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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by DiggyJohnson on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:26PM (#46918999)
How is this relevant? At best it’s tangentially related and low effort
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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by largbae on Friday February 06, 2026 @06:29PM (#46919606)
Can you not vibe code it back into existence yet?
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Re:The Waymo World Model: A New Frontier for Autonomous Driv... by jamespo on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:08PM (#46918816)
Took a while but I got to the google reader post. Self host tt-rss, it's much better
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