Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by DigitalSea on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:47PM (#8987612)

Considering Google have invested a fair bit of cash into Uber which might be a tax write-off for Google, I would probably say we are going to see Google try and buy Uber out instead. Cutting off their maps access would probably open up a can of worms for Google as Uber would undoubtedly take legal action (and they have the funds to really go for it), there could be a little bit of conflict of interest happening here as Google have access to inner workings of Uber's business model and the business itself.

But having said that, there is probably nothing stopping Google from creating a driverless car Uber rival, it would fall outside of the realm of being a true direct competitor as there are no drivers. But are driverless cars at a point where they can be rolled out on a larger scale? Seems there is a lot of regulation and process to abide by before that starts to happen, maybe a controlled rollout?

I am surprised Google haven't tried launching their own airline yet, it would probably be undeniably easier than a ridesharing network of driverless cars.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by beamatronic on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:27PM (#8987845)

They are building their own private terminal at San Jose airport [1].

1. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23041939/san-jose-city-council...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by kunaalarya on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @12:23AM (#8988985)

for their private jets

"Signature's project includes seven hangars for corporate jets, with five of those hangars to be used by Blue City Holdings, its primary tenant. That company will manage aircraft for Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, whose private jets are now parked at Moffett Field, where their lease is up next year."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by mef on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:52PM (#8987962)

Vastly less upside on running your own airline than transforming ground transportation.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by k-mcgrady on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:35PM (#8987504)

>> "Google could cut Uber down hard by pulling Google Maps API access."

Why would they do that to a company they are invested in?

>> "if they execute on this."

There's the key. They are going to face the same regulatory problems as Uber. Worse if they go the self-driving car route as that going to require huge overalls to legislation worldwide.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by nbm326 on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:47PM (#8987608)

I was thinking about this. They don't necessarily have to face the same problems as Uber because they don't have to compete with taxi companies. Uber's model completely relies on direct competition with legacy taxi companies. Google could simply offer their self driving cars to said taxi companies and they'll be able to cut their personnel by 95% over night. You can cut the costs of operating a taxi service while still operating within the confines of the current system.

Not sure the taxi companies would get in bed with Google, or cut rates accordingly, I'm just suggesting that driverless cars have certain advantages.

That said, theres a whole other can of worms of trying to pass regulation allowing pilotless cars, which I'd guess will be just as difficult as duking it out with TLC's around the country.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by pavedwalden on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:01PM (#8987695)

Hasn't Uber already done a lot of the bush clearing? Sure, there's plenty more to get hashed out, but it might be nice to draft behind Uber, only entering markets once the legal situation stabilizes. I've always been fond of the expression "The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by gaius on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:42PM (#8987569)

I think we should differentiate between a self-driving car (with a full set of controls) and a driverless car. The former is 100x more likely to happen than the latter. You might see driverless buses that go on predefined routes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by paulhauggis on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:47PM (#8987609)

so when any other company does something like this, we cry anti-trust. But when Google does it, it's good business?

I'm not sure where all of this Google love comes from on HN (besides all of the engineers that work there). Google is just as evil as any large corporation.

They may surgar-coat everything with a "do no evil" mantra, but it's just good PR. When you peel back these layers, it's business as usual.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by smtddr on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:20PM (#8987797)

>> Google is just as evil as any large corporation.

Let's not exaggerate. Google might not be perfect; nobody is, but their actions are great magnitudes in distance from the evil some other companies have done. I'd rather work for Google than any of the companies below:

- http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/10/1141724/-Walmart-fu...

- http://www.alternet.org/story/52526/rural_communities_exploi...

- http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/08/02/3466915/chiquita-c...

- http://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-metivier/module-2-why-doe...

- https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-prisons

- ...just about any oil company.

- ...The diamond industry.

- ...and I'm highly suspicious of what goes on in insurance & credit card companies.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by paulhauggis on Monday February 02, 2015 @11:24PM (#8988848)

Google's entire business is based on completely taking every single one of our actions, thoughts, connections, and interests and selling it out to advertisers.

Most Android phones push you to put everything into the cloud. Do you know why? Oh yeah, that's right, so they can sell your data to advertisers.

Recently, they stopped putting organic search terms in referral traffic from the Google search engine to a website, effectively making it impossible to use any other applications except Google Adsense. Great company, right?

They have had a monopoly as bad and far reaching as Microsoft..yet I rarely hear the hatred that I used to hear about Microsoft in the late 90s.

It seems like all you need to do is support the developer community by giving out lots of free software/open source and the tech community will forgive you for pretty much anything (employing you at $100,000+/year also helps in this forgiveness).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by stickfigure on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:32PM (#8987864)

But when Google does it, it's good business?

Google hasn't done this. So let's not get worked up about a hypothetical.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by FeeTinesAMady on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:04PM (#8987720)

It might be more that a lot of people consider Uber to be a despicable company, and Google is the lesser of those evils in this case.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by msabalau on Monday February 02, 2015 @08:06PM (#8988273)

So "we" cry antitrust whenever a company decides to enter a market? That seems odd.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by 1ris on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:40PM (#8987549)

OSM is a way better anyway. This would improve uber.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by potatolicious on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:43PM (#8987574)

Not that I don't love OSM - I use it myself for some side projects - but is it really better?

Here in NYC I've found several streets mislabeled as one-way in the wrong direction, and not too long ago at that. If these major errors can be found by some guy just fooling around, in one of the biggest cities in the world, how useful is OSM for navigation?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by Aloisius on Monday February 02, 2015 @08:26PM (#8988350)

Google Maps tried to route me down a staircase in San Francisco for several months, told me I could turn left on a major street that you have never been able to turn left on and decided my address was not only in the wrong part of town, but in a completely different zip code at one point because someone had created a "business" at my address and set it to be in a completely different place which made it pretty much impossible to order from any service dependent on them like grubhub or eat24hours.

No one has perfect data. At least when I update OSM, it updates relatively quickly as opposed to Google Maps which took months to get updated after reporting the errors.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by toomuchtodo on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:04PM (#8987717)

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Google puts an incredible amount of effort into their GIS/mapping division, and OSM would be hard pressed to compete with those resources.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by jbigelow76 on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:45PM (#8987596)

Bing map data would work just as well. Google might have more coverage out in the sticks but for where Uber operates the coverage density and accuracy difference would be somewhere between negligible to non-existent.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by bsdpython on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:41PM (#8987557)

An anti-trust lawsuit would be guaranteed

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by terrabakky on Monday February 02, 2015 @06:16PM (#8987781)

I can't see it happening. Only recently they got partially integrated with maps.google.com in some cities.

You're right though, it would absolutely destroy the business, requiring them to redevelop their apps. Would be a huge service disruption.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by gaius on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:39PM (#8987536)

Killer quote:

which gives Google a fire hose of data about transportation patterns within cities

It seems that their investment in Uber was about getting someone to gather the data for them, perhaps it was cheaper than doing it themselves!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor by deeviant on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:42PM (#8987572)

I don't think the quote was saying that Uber is providing said fire hose of data, but rather that Google Maps gives Google a fire hose of traffic data which in turn Uber utilizes to create efficient routing.

[ Parent | on HN ]