I wouldn't have called Uber a "taxi rival" when they were an app for hiring a town car either. Things change.

This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last. Considering how much they've invested in autonomous vehicles only a crazy person would believe they're going to leave the entire market for self-driving taxis wide open for Uber etc. Google will have a taxi request service within a couple of years.

> This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last.

What makes you think it won't be their last? Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim. It's like, their modus operandi.

I think it's pretty clear that this won't be their last effort in this area. In this case, you can take the very-close-proximity efforts by them - self driving cars - that they are taking very seriously, and extend that expectation here.

Does it really make sense that Google would build self-driving cars without also thinking about ride sharing technology and userbase? I think the primary use case of Google's cars will be optimal ride sharing, doesn't everyone think this as well?

Sure, their MO is to try things out and ditch the ones that don't work - and this one may not work. But if it doesn't, I'd bet that they'd try again. There's a perfect fit between self-driving technology and ride sharing (hence Uber's interest in self-driving cars).

I agree, ride sharing with self driving cars is going to be pretty normal in the near future.

What will be cool is once they are self driving, they will be able to auto calculate quickest routes to pick people up, drop off, etc while being able to re-calculate to pick up people along the way.

Vast segments of the population (that is to say: probably 90%+ of women and 40%+ of men) are going to be deeply uncomfortable with getting into an automobile in the company of exactly one totally random stranger. Even if there are cameras.

For $3 of savings I bet a lot more people than that will do it.

I think lots of times it might save more than that, I picked a low number because I expect even modest savings will convince people to do it, especially if the impact on convenience is small.

I think that lots of people have lots of very self-contradictory beliefs about driverless cars.

For example: An UberX ride today generally costs between $10 and $20 here in sunny San Francisco (outside of surge). Nearly 80% of that goes to the driver! The premise of driverless cars leading to massive rides-for-hire is that driverless cars could massively reduce that cost -- probably from $10 - $20ish to $5 - $10ish.

So just there -- is ride-sharing really going to save $3? Presumably not for a $5 ride. Not for a $6 ride either. A $7 ride? Maybe! But if so Uber is sure as hell not getting a lot for driving ride-sharing.

Okay, so let's say that a driverless car would ordinarily cost you $10 per ride, and you can reduce it to $7 by sharing. First of all, note that this reduces the value of the service for you -- even if you have no safety concerns, it takes longer. Then add in the non-safety awkwardness thing. It's pretty close quarters for a relatively long ride. What if the other person is just socially awkward?

And then imagine if you will that it's someone that you feel -- rightly or wrongly -- is genuinely threatening. And you're cooped up in a Toyota Camry for 15 minutes with this person and absolutely no one to run interference for you.

For $3?

Also: if getting a driverless Uber costs $10, you should at least contemplate owning your own driverless car. $10 at current business write-off rates is about 18 miles. It sounds like in this hypothetical Uber isn't a great deal. You could realize most or all of your cost-savings by owning your own driverless car, and as a bonus you won't have to share your car with a stranger, and as a further bonus you won't get gouged at high demand times.

Yes, I believe that many people will indeed put up with some shit for a couple of dollars a day.

Point taken on how many people that would apply to if miles were cheap.

I think it's realistic to have single seat cars.

Also people use public transport without too much hesitation.

It may be realistic to have single seat cars. But that's not ride sharing.

Public transit has (typically) more than one stranger. Indeed, crowds. That is, somewhat ironically, less threatening than being trapped in close quarters with a single stranger.

Absolutely, this a million times. Realistically public transport should evolve to a network of self driving (smaller) vehicles - and yes, optimise the heck out of it. Bus systems are pretty inefficient things (except at peak times)

Buses are likely most efficient at peak times (assuming efficiency to mean is cost-per-rider and not mean-annoyance-of-riders)

I'd love to see self-driving cars completely replace human drivers ASAP.

I'd trust software to drive me to my destination safely and responsibly much more than I would trust random strangers, or even myself for that matter.

It's possible that this is like what they did with motorola, initially it looked like they were trying to have vertical integration similar to apple, but then for other reasons felt compelled to give that up.

In any case this is dissimilar to most google projects because it looks like it's mostly under Waze's control which atm has a lot of autonomy, it's likely being called a google project by the Waze team because of the brand recognition and by reporters because it's more interesting to talk about how google might be putting itself in a precarious legal position (vis-a-vis a conflict of interest), instead of saying Waze created yet another ridesharing app.

> I think it's pretty clear that this won't be their last effort in this area.

> There's a perfect fit between self-driving technology and ride sharing

In Google's case, that would be continuous advertisement inundation to the product(s)[1] as well as even more data collection on the product[1].

1 - product: previously known as "a user[2]".

2 - user: archaic form of the term "person".

Sometimes Google swims anyway even if it's too cold. See Google Plus.

This market is too big and has millions of customers proving their willingness to pay for taxi-style services or public transport every day.

> Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim.

But only after a ton of people have started to use it, and weren't warned that Google was "toe-ing the water": health, reader, code(!), I'm certain there are others ...

But why doesn't Apple doesn't try to create an UBER ?

For the same reason they don't make washing machines, or sell apples, or build houses - they believe their money is better spent on other things. Apple think they'll make more money in the long term innovating on consumer electronics.

That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an Apple car within 5 years of the first autonomous vehicles going on public sale.

Maybe we'll see an Apple car. But i suspect in general ,that self-driving cars and especially taxis would push the car market to derive much less value from branding and marketing and much more value from hardcore technology with design being much less a differentiator than today - at least for the mass market.

But even if Apple sells cars to 5% of the population , it could be a big business for them.

>i suspect in general ,that self-driving cars and especially taxis would push the car market to derive much less value from branding and marketing and much more value from hardcore technology with design being much less a differentiator than today

Why?

A lot of people have hypothesized that autonomous vehicles will drastically change the economics such that daily car sharing/rental will be cheaper than car ownership, and similarly convenient. This might in turn lead to a decline in car culture and personal car ownership. With a larger percentage of vehicles being owned by companies (or at least by individuals who are often loaning out their vehicle to the network), the distinguishing factors in the market may shift away from personal taste and lean more heavily on efficiency and safety and gadgetry.

A lot of hypothetical guesswork in there of course, but those are the kind of ideas I've heard lately on the matter.

I see where you are coming from, but I wonder if Apple will play it's "luxury brand" card and cater not so much to the masses but to the wealthy. Privately owned self driving cars will definitely be preferred among those with wealth in the future. Sort of like owning the latest iPhone, it will be a status symbol that will also attract those for whom the cost is illogical beyond status.

Also China.

So... in the future with all cars almost autonomous, I'm wondering will there be a resurgence in motorcycle touring culture?

I suspect Apple etc. will deliberately create a rental car status competition.

We already have rental car status competition. It's called a limo service.Not very popular.

What model of car was the last taxi you took? Did you pick that taxi because of its stylish design? In contrast, were you impressed that the driver knew a shortcut to avoid traffic by getting off one exit early and going through a parking garage?

Actually, I am surprised by how nice taxis are. I never find myself in an "old" taxi. But perhaps it's just that the heavy use wears the engine out before the exterior loses its shine.

Generally the interior is the first thing to get trashed.

Last taxi I took was an UberBlack Mercedes Benz. I paid extra because I prefer riding in a new and comfortable car to riding in a five year old Honda.

Just as the Mandarin Oriental doesn't compete with Motel 6, there will still be markets for a wide variety of cars at a wide variety of price points.

Isn't one big deterrent simply Apple's lack of data? Google, by contrast, has all the data it needs about riding habits, maps, etc

I don't follow the question. Why doesn't Walmart?

Apple(and Google) has unique advantages as the owners of the major platforms, and and major mapping apps, with access to all travel data. Those are major building blocks of such a travel service.

Mapping data isn't travel data. One is useful for representing the world, the other is only useful for marketing data.

What access does Apple have to travel data?

It has access to all the location data of each of it's users.

Except that they've made a big deal lately of differentiating themselves from Google by not using your data.

That's what I thought, unsure if it's true. But Tim Cook was making a big deal about the lack of data collection.

Because Apple is smarter than that... they will do what they do best...

Let someone work out the kinks, then step in and make it better...

Why waste all the money on all of this regulatory squabbling... let Uber and Lyft do that, give all the free rides, lose money to make this thing legal... then when it's legal, swoop in and take over...

It's not so simple. There are network effects at play(if we're talking about shared trips) - and those are hard to fight against , even for large companies like Google and Apple. This is why i think, Google is entering now - because UBER and Lyft started offering shared rides(which BTW grow rapidly).

Why does Google want it? It's simple. Google is an advertising company. The more free time you have where you have nothing but your phone or computer, the more time you'll spend searching for things, and therefore clicking on their ads. An average person with a 30+ minute commute would sure as hell do a lot of shopping if they didn't have to drive. While we are all waiting on self-driving cars, this is another step in that direction. They want to validate the idea that having people drive less means more profit for them.

Apple is not an advertising company, they are a consumer electronics company. You won't be buying more iPhones by driving less, so they don't benefit from self-driving cars or car pooling quite as much.

Why do people talk about Google being an advertising company when, while it's a significant fraction of current revenue, it's also only a small portion of their interests and investments.

The first time you hear it, it sounds surprising. Then someone explains about revenue and it makes sense. So then you want to share the cleverness.

Of course, it's actually a pretty shallow analysis, unsupported by the company's history and inconsistent with some of the company's current behavior. How useful is it really to consider Google as being in the same equivalence class as TBWA\CHIAT\DAY? Well never mind, the meme is sticky!

You are trolling right? What is Google then? What's the in-depth analysis? Do you consider them some altruistic non-profit that just happens to sell ads in order to fund their "let's improve humanity" efforts?

Take a look at these:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/06/apple-google-microsoft-revenue-sou...

http://www.statista.com/statistics/266471/distribution-of-go...

https://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-earnings

Notice how even last year 89.5% of Google's revenue is straight up advertising. What else would you call them?

Or if you don't buy this argument let's try it by comparison. Is Zappos a shoe store? For sure, they did things differently and focuses on happiness of employees and customer satisfaction, but at the end of the day, they sell shoes. They have an interest in people buying more shoes and if they could, they'd certainly do something to make people buy more shoes. Substitute Google and ads in those two sentences. Just because they spend some minute portion of their profits on other projects doesn't make them anything but an ad company, even if they are a much more innovative ad company than the others you mentioned.

OK, Google is an ad company with a lot of hobbies. Better?

How about Google is a tech company that happens to sell ads. Better?

Hmm, no. Considering them an ad company helps to keep what they do for money on the forefront. Trying to push it down as some ancillary activity makes sense if you're marketing for Google, but not in any other situation.

It's difficult to tell whether you're a troll or just very attached to a single perspective. Yes, it makes sense to look at Google as primarily an ad company in some contexts--for instance, attempting to understand their business model. In other senses, Google has done a lot to distance themselves from being just an ad company, diversifying in image, product, talent, markets, and company culture. Probably more, but I don't know too much about the intricacies of what Google actually innovated on. Just by doing this, yes, I do think it is inherently dishonest to group them with other entities that do just resell web space. And I do not think that Google would cease to exist if people boycotted advertised products tomorrow, either, because their grasp of tech culture is so strong. People will always need analytics, retargeting, and profiling, so reducing an entire company to advertisers is downright insulting. Just the competition to ios alone has irreversibly changed the future of smartphones, mostly for the better.

Hell, just the market value of Google's brand is enough to distinguish them. You cannot buy that trust, you earn it by providing more value than an advertising brand could.

I am not using ads since somewhere mid 2009. For me they couldn't be less related to advertising. This is why I see them as a tech company.

I liked the first one.

> while it's a significant fraction of current revenue

That's why. They aren't doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts. If there's no money involved, at least tangentially, it's not something they are going to do.

Yea, but it's not like they are dedicated to making money advertising. They're dedicated to making money, period, and advertising is just the current mechanism.

"Ford is dedicated to making money. Making cars is just a way of doing that, so they are not a car company."

I'm tempted to agree. :)

Because right now they are an advertising company as their other investments are not significant revenue drivers, or are meant to provide additional audience data for advertising.

All of their interests and investments are all justified because it either drives people to look at advertisements or it generates more information about the users to make their ad platform more valuable.

UBER plans to attack the "drive to work" segment of the transportation market, and it's potentially a huge opportunity for UBER.This Google service, if successful, might fill that role very well.

And the fact that it's cheaper is basically "disruption from below" - a proven strategy in many businesses. While this exact transport service model generally failed , it did succeed in France(blabla car), and Google has unique marketing advantages that might make it succeed elsewhere.

Also, the main competitive barrier for UBER is that many consumers have the habit of ordering transportation through it's app. If Google gets that , the rest is relatively easy.

Just FYI, it's Uber, not UBER. It's not an acronym.

https://www.uber.com/ take a look at that-there all-caps branding. It's pretty prominent in the app, too. (At least for UBER as an overall brand - uberX and the like are gladly lowercased.)

Though they do use lowercase in some minor text. Still easy enough to make the mistake, though.

That's just the logo. Looking at their legal documents is just Uber Technologies Inc.

http://newsroom.uber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FormRule...

Everything on their home page is in all-caps, not just the word Uber. If you look at press releases, their social media accounts, their emails, anything other than their all-caps homepage, it's shown as Uber.

Blablacar is more disrupting long distance travel (from city to city). It is present in Germany as well, but it is not soooo popular (I can mostly find a ride from my city to any other city only on weekends).

> And the fact that it's cheaper is basically "disruption from below" - a proven strategy in many businesses.

I believe the business model you are referencing is generally known as "race to the bottom"[1]. FWIW, it typically is only a "proven strategy" for the business which can starve out everyone else.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom

Yep, a big factor to consider here is that while Uber has a head start, Google has a massive chest derived from other products and political clout to deal with the regulatory piece.

They can absolutely price Uber and others out of the market on this if they felt like it.

Since this is actual carpooling, unlike Uber, there won't be any regulatory pushback. Every jurisdiction loves carpooling.

I don't know. Carpooling could significantly hurt tax revenues in Israel. But of course they can tax through the app.

Could you expand a bit further on the tax revenue impact?

Yep--it seems more like a smartphone-enabled extension of the 'casual carpool' concept (http://sfcasualcarpool.com/)

[Edit: except you can set up rides the night before; see Haaretz link in my other comment.]

Or the similarly non-app-enabled Slug Lines in DC: http://www.slug-lines.com/

Right, this is actually a ride share/carpool service, not taxi like Uber.

With Google's amount of data, 2 trips will 'force' drivers to restrict input to commuting habits and have more insights on it.

Google still holds 5% of Uber.

For commuting, I'd call it Uber's abandonment and Lyft's death.

> Google still holds 5% of Uber.

Is that public knowledge?

I don't know if the exact percentage is publicly known, but that Google Ventures invested $258M into Uber certainly is: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-i...

Is it even still public that Google still holds that investment?

Indeed.

> ...allows users to share rides to work and back

I'm not sure how many people take Uber to and from work every day. I'd imagine it doesn't contribute to the bulk of ridership, though.

Given UBER's past and current market plays, commuter ride-sharing is a natural extension of UBER's array of segments.

I keep seeing a bunch of Google Express vans sitting around idle because they don't have any goods to deliver, this sort of thing could easily capture a bit of revenue from those idle vehicles. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw that Uber was doing deliveries.

How do you weigh 8 hours of idle time vs 8 hours of driving time in the long term ownership cost of one of those vans, though?

Well according to the drivers they aren't getting paid if they aren't driving. So it perhaps motivates them.

EDIT: Thinking about this a bit more what is the value of having nominal control over a fleet of vehicles of various capabilities sitting around a metropolitan area? Someone wants to go from point A to point B? Dispatch a nearby passenger capable vehicle to pick them up and drop them off. Package needs to go from here to there? Send a vehicle and driver over to get this package and take it over.

Imagine the economics of consolidating courier service, taxi cabs, emergency transport, into a single 'app' will all 'contract' labor.

> I'd hardly call it an Uber rival

Isn't this what Lyft does? I'm guessing Uber put some money in a reporter's pocket to submarine them in this article instead.

You are correct: that's pretty much exactly how Lyft started: "oh, this is just ridesharing [1]", it's "just trips to places the driver would go anyway", and for which "you can choose to give them a nominal amount" to cover gas, totally optional (though they'll rate you poorly).

They've since dropped the pretense but a lot of the trappings remain.

Edit: Don't mean to sound like I'm "hatin' on" Lyft, just amused at the dance they have to go through to fend off busybodies.

[1] a term they still use against protest from journalists, and TBH, reasonable people

Lyft certainly lets you take more that 2 drives per day, and certainly not just too and from work. Also, at least in some locales Lyft has gotten rid of the "donation" fiction as many local laws explicitly state that any type of payment counts as a ride-for-hire.

This is basically just a carpooling app, and is nowhere near a rival to Uber or Lyft.

yet.

Considering 90% of my Uber usage is for commuting, this could take significant market away from Uber.

I suspect many of these things will change as features like only two trips per day doesn't seem very sustainable. Right now it's not even close to being a rival, but what it evolves into very well may.

The legal implications of this approach (compared to uber's) are way easier to deal with. They are not trying to fix taxis, they are trying to fix car-pooling.

Exactly. Sounds like a Social Carpool application than competition to Taxi Hailing service.

> pilot project

The title is truly misleading. That's either bad journalism or someone is shorting Uber stock...

Uber is not a public company so it does not have any stock on the open market.

However, correlation trading is a viable option.. for example: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/19/heres-one-way-to-b...