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Google To Compete With Uber, Uber To Explore Autonomous Transportation
An anonymous reader writes: Bloomberg breaks news that Uber has a major new competitor in ridesharing: Google. According to the report, Google has informed Uber's board of directors of this development, and shown them screenshots of a ride-sharing app currently being tested by employees. Why did Google share this information with Uber? Because they've heavily invested in Uber, and Google's David Drummond, chief legal officer and senior VP of corporate development, is on Uber's board. Of course, a Google ride-sharing service would fit perfectly with their project to build and develop autonomous vehicles. This could be very bad news for Uber (not to mention other ride-sharing services) because they rely heavily on Google's mapping data. That is, unless Uber beats them to it. Uber today announced a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to develop, among other things, "autonomy technology." A source told TechCrunch that Uber went on a hiring spree and "cleaned out" the National Robotics Engineering Center, a research organization affiliated with CMU.
Blatant conflict of interest with Uber's minority shareholders. Watching Google tapdance around this one will be loads of fun.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I guess the whole flamewar in the other discussion thread was for nothing; if autonomous cars become the norm then the bigger issue will be passengers not leaving the car in usable shape after a ride, and other passengers having to report that when the car comes for them.
I suspect that private car ownership, even in an era of autonomous vehicles, will still be more the norm than not so long as people have places to park them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
After the bad blood generated with the Apple iPhone stuff, google realized that they can't just compete with companies that have google employees as board members.
I'm surprised Apple didn't sue Schmidt for breach of fiduciary duty, now that I think about it. At what point was he going to tell the Apple board about Android?
I've been following with interest the debate about government-regulated taxis versus free-market Uber.
So far as I can tell, the argument for Uber is that it's cheaper, and the rides are nicer and more convenient, but otherwise it's the same service. In particular, the service has not been a statistically significant source of crime.
The arguments against are that 1) it's illegal, and 2) Uber drivers don't have enough (or the right kind of) insurance.
The first argument seems contrived. Up here in NH the Portsmouth taxi commission decided that Uber is a better solution, then voted to disband. (As the Free State project points out, "where else would this happen?")
And as to the insurance argument, the Boston Globe reports that "Passengers hurt in accidents often run into denial and evasion by poorly insured firms".
Uber is a good service, people seem to like and want it.
Are there any objections I've missed? Besides "predictions", of course(*). Anyone can predict anything and sound just like an economist.
(*) Predictions are invalid because both solutions are in play right now. There's no need to predict what will happen because we can just look to see if it's happening.
Somebody needs to put these paid taxi services to bed. Ride sharing in no way involves set fares.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Once any system handles Pitt well, they have won the map issue. As someone who lives in the city, I can say that nobody has won the city. Google is close, but they have not won.
Please correct the headline, thanks:
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
What ideas did they obviously steal? The basic concept of using a smartphone's location capabilities to make 'calling a taxi' effectively automatic is clever; but probably not patentably original given its similarity to things like emergency services dispatching systems and fleet management tools. Aside from that, it's all details of implementation(which Google has yet to unveil, unless you count the big chunk of their mapping technology and data that Uber depends on). I suspect that this will lead to some choice comments from Uber's famously tactful and emotionally stable management figures; but what can we point to as obviously stolen here?
I don't think that Uber is even being all that original through the idea of applying a smartphone to electronic dispatch. I'd bet that some cab companies had already toyed with the idea of allowing one to summon without having to speak with a dispatcher.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I've actually given this some thought, and I'd still own a car, even if it were entirely autonomous in its operation, assuming I continue to live where I either have on-site parking or have ready access to inexpensive or free parking close by. If I want to go somewhere I don't want to wait for the car to come fetch me, I want to be able to essentially hop-in and go.
I think that my wife and I could probably get away with only one car if that car were truly autonomous, assuming that traffic-related issues don't prevent that car from making its rounds to drops us off at each of our jobs or pick us up on time, but we'd still want to own.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Google has a good amount of people that have been working on this since the DARPA days and effectively already have a working prototype. Unless Uber is hiring people that have been working on the Google project, they are sadly mistaken if they think they can beat Google too the punch.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Very likely not. I don't think that I've heard of any prior implementation specifically aimed at cabs; but its hardly uncommon for the first attempt to die more or less silently(and even if no dedicated service offered it, the various 'social' applications that allow your friends to view your location have surely been used to arrange rides/carpools/pick somebody up from time to time). Even if they were first for cabs, or first to use commodity smartphones rather than dedicated fleet-management-vendor GPS modules, we all know how wonderfully 'innovative' the 'Doing X; but over the internet!' and 'Doing Y; but on a smartphone!' school of patents aren't.
I went with the more traditional 'dedicated' dispatch systems, since those (while less visible and much more expensive) are nearly as old as civilian access to GPS, and thus very, very, reliably prior to Uber; but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are even more similar systems to point to.
Will the autonomous cars crash if you get out without paying?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
So the defense of Uber that they are not a taxi company is that the cars were driving on their own anyway? Are these cars sentient beings?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I suspect that Uber is hiring all these researchers to patent key R&D on the still-developing field of autonomous vehicles, and use it as leverage against Google (which probably has its own chest of patents already) and other self-driving automakers.
"That's going to be huge in the future."
Maybe, maybe not. It depends how many people are willing to travel in an automated vehicle if there is an alternative one with a human driver. Plus costs will play a part too - they may be no option if automated cabs can seriously undercut human driven cabs and eventually the latter go out of business.
" I'd predict that eventually everyone will have a subscription to an automatic transportation service."
Err, why? You can be a subscriber to normal taxi services now in many countries. How many people bother? I think you underestimate the desirability of the private car to a large proportion of the population of the planet. And if you think thats just a western viewpoint take a look at whats happened in china in the last 20 years with the exponential increase in private car ownership.
Try driving in some european cities with windy narrow streets where cars have to pull in to let others pass and drivers cutting each other up left, right and centre. Good luck to a google car managing that. And even they are easy compared to some asian cities where the vehicles can hardly move due to obstructions and people.
I've been waiting for something like that for a long time and wondered where it would come from.
Personally, I'm a big fan of short-time rental companies (where you pick up a car wherever you find it, and drop it when you're at your destination, and someone else will take it from there). And the only problem is that at certain times, cars pool up in certain areas. So at times, the nearest car is quite far away. Or if you go to the center - no parking space.
How cool would it be to have a car that you just exit at your destination, and it'll go and find a parking space on its own? And when you need it, you open an app on your smartphone, and the nearest car comes to pick you up.
For me, that is exactly what the future of transportation in cities is going to look like. Robot cars for short distance travel.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If we could figure that out from the outside then they wouldn't have needed to be on the board in the first place. Even businesses that appear simple have unexpected aspects that become apparent through experience.
Greatly surprised to learn "Dont-be-evil" Google is heavily invested in "Always-be-evil" Uber. What was it like in the board room? Was it like the cloud chamber in CERN where matter and anti-matter collide annihilating each other?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They can try to have EULA saying that we are not responsible but that will not hold up in court must less if there get in a accident with 3rd party victims.
also what about traffic tickets? or even a case of a fake cop pulls over the auto drive car and something bad happens.
Pizza places use drivers with out commercial insurance and they pay low so the drivers can't do good up keep on there cars.
http://setexasrecord.com/news/...
and they are not helping the driver at all
If Google cabs come pick you up and you pay them to drive you somewhere, Google is running a straight up taxi service. It's not ridesharing in any sense. Maybe Google would allow private car owners to put their driverless cars into the system, and keep a portion of the fares, but I don't see this as being very motivated. Google will have the driverless cars first, private competitors in their system would only drive down prices, and then there's the legwork of making sure that all the privateer taxis are safe and insured.
I love the idea of driverless taxis, and I'd love to live in a city where they were the only passenger cars allowed on roads. Unfortunately, I think that idiots will ruin the idea - for example, by using these things as convenient "date rape cabins".
I saw in the news today that Google may be developing its own driverless cabs.
Yipee!
Nice going Google, lets put even more people out of work!
If I were a rapist or mugger, Uber would be the perfect setup. First disconnect the rear door handles, wait till you pick up someone you like or looks like they have some cash, and drive them to a secluded location.
This is why taxi medallions cost $50,000-$100,000 - the taxi companies have to screen the applicants or risk losing that money.
I'd suggest working on your evil genius bit some more. You've got a few rough edges in that plan, son.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Pizza places use drivers with out commercial insurance and they pay low so the drivers can't do good up keep on there cars.
My brother did pizza delivery during his undergrad years. He was paid minimum wage plus tips and provided his own car.
He had no particular difficulty covering the maintenance of the vehicle or adding commercial insurance to the vehicle. (Our parents insisted he have it.) Granted he lived at home and didn't pay rent.
And the article you link to mentions a 32$ million judgement. Although he -did- have commercial insurance, I know he didn't have THAT much insurance. I don't think much of anybody does. I personally carry a couple million.
And frankly, anyone who thinks they are so important that their injury or death is worth a 30 million dollar settlement should be self-insuring to that amount, instead of hoping whoever hits them has that much insurance.
Short distance travel? Walk. Avoids the health risks of all that car-sitting. How is your road funding going, by the way? $65 billion in bail-outs to the delightfully insolvent highway trust fund, the industry slumped out dead over the "build new road" lever and crickets on the topic of funding basic road maintenance are a few of the blinking red warning signs I've noticed. Ah, hmm, looks like they'll be needing another "bridging the gap" road funding tax increase in Seattle, as the previous one has already run dry. And my oh my look at the potholes! Heh heh.
I know Uber are doing well, but is it really sensible for them to be investing in research in a field whose commercial prospects are at least a few decades out?
Google can afford a research program that won't be profitable in the foreseeable future. Can Uber?