I'm sure that if you did sue, Google would have responded to your suit the same way they respond to all lawsuits - "We are above the law. That law doesn't apply to us. Our business model calls for a re-examination of that area of law." In my opinion, their legal risk exposure is significant and will ultimately cost them more money than MSFT has had to pay out through the years. The risk goes well beyond IP-related issues, as your experience suggests. Greed may be good, but the DOJ will only allow you to enjoy your greed for so long.
I think most everyone is missing the point here. DARPA projects aren't initiated with the immediate intention of helping John Q. Public. Sure, some projects have had trickle-down effects in that regard, but for the most part DARPA projects are designed to help one group - the Department of Defense.
The clear intention of the urban project at this time is to act as a bridge to the more useful and applicable project of mixed-terrain autonomous navigation. That is what real-world defense missions tend to be. For example, when I was in OIF, we staged in Kuwait and convoyed up to Baghdad. During that trip we drove on desert sand, rocky desert, somewhat modernized paved highways, gravel sideroads, bombed-out highways, dense jungle roads near the river, over various levels of bridges and some other stuff that's a mix of all of that, and finally dense city traffic interlaced with crazy Baghdad drivers, no traffic signals or cops, random roadblocks and the occasional bomb. Having soldiers consistently do those operations can be a waste of resources and create unnecessary risks. The aim of these projects is to create a situation where autonomous vehicles, that might be observed through on-board cameras or through an overflight (by an autonomous plane), can become a practical and safer alternative. Relying on things like trains or planes alone is silly - often the current infrastructure will not be able to support either of these (no airports or viable runways, too far to fly, too dangerous to fly, no train tracks, no functioning rail signal system, etc.).
Ultimately, there won't be a lot of this kind of work done in downtown Manhattan. While some third-world cities can be even crazier traffic-wise, we should try to be realistic in how these vehicles might ultimately be deployed. Regardless though, I think it's important that the specific requirements of each of these projects exceed those expectations in order to create vehicles that have the ability to accomodate worst-case scenarios.
I can definitely see the ultimate end of these projects being an autonomous cargo ship that departs from an aircraft carrier carrying autonomous vehicles that will disembark on their own and travel to their intended target on their own with minimal oversight through onboard cameras and overhead surveillance. That would be useful.
If soccer-moms around the country can later drive around town by pressing a button and sitting back to talk on their cell phone and drink a latte because of these projects, great. But that's not their targeted market.
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I'm sure that if you did sue, Google would have responded to your suit the same way they respond to all lawsuits - "We are above the law. That law doesn't apply to us. Our business model calls for a re-examination of that area of law." In my opinion, their legal risk exposure is significant and will ultimately cost them more money than MSFT has had to pay out through the years. The risk goes well beyond IP-related issues, as your experience suggests. Greed may be good, but the DOJ will only allow you to enjoy your greed for so long.
The clear intention of the urban project at this time is to act as a bridge to the more useful and applicable project of mixed-terrain autonomous navigation. That is what real-world defense missions tend to be. For example, when I was in OIF, we staged in Kuwait and convoyed up to Baghdad. During that trip we drove on desert sand, rocky desert, somewhat modernized paved highways, gravel sideroads, bombed-out highways, dense jungle roads near the river, over various levels of bridges and some other stuff that's a mix of all of that, and finally dense city traffic interlaced with crazy Baghdad drivers, no traffic signals or cops, random roadblocks and the occasional bomb. Having soldiers consistently do those operations can be a waste of resources and create unnecessary risks. The aim of these projects is to create a situation where autonomous vehicles, that might be observed through on-board cameras or through an overflight (by an autonomous plane), can become a practical and safer alternative. Relying on things like trains or planes alone is silly - often the current infrastructure will not be able to support either of these (no airports or viable runways, too far to fly, too dangerous to fly, no train tracks, no functioning rail signal system, etc.).
Ultimately, there won't be a lot of this kind of work done in downtown Manhattan. While some third-world cities can be even crazier traffic-wise, we should try to be realistic in how these vehicles might ultimately be deployed. Regardless though, I think it's important that the specific requirements of each of these projects exceed those expectations in order to create vehicles that have the ability to accomodate worst-case scenarios.
I can definitely see the ultimate end of these projects being an autonomous cargo ship that departs from an aircraft carrier carrying autonomous vehicles that will disembark on their own and travel to their intended target on their own with minimal oversight through onboard cameras and overhead surveillance. That would be useful.
If soccer-moms around the country can later drive around town by pressing a button and sitting back to talk on their cell phone and drink a latte because of these projects, great. But that's not their targeted market.