Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

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"Hi, this Jane from the procurement department of GM North America. We might be interested in licensing your software. Please give me a call back so we can set up a meeting."

They don't need to build tech. They can buy it. GM can write some pretty big checks. They flat out bought Cruise just to cover their butts.

When I was an intern at a defense contractor ~1/10th the size of GM my cube was across from procurement. I think a lot of people here don't understand the kind of scale companies like this play at. Your problem isn't "how do we pay for this" it's "will anyone sell me all this all at once or sign a contract to provide it all over the timetable we want". You make bets on how many times around the earth the welding wire you'll buy next quarter will go. GM shipped ~10 million vehicles in 2017. That means they had to sign a contract with someone to supply approximately an Exxon Valdez worth of motor oil and another of ATF just for their factories.

Waymo is far the best self driving tech and nobody has the money to buy it, as Alphabet is not selling (it's the first real diversification from ads revenue). GM is few years behind, but hopefully those few years are not enough for Waymo to create a monopoly.

GM really isn't far behind.

Self Driving is not only a technical problem, it will be a people/marketing/legal/political problem. By the time these will be solved, GM/Tesla/Toyota should have competing solutions.

Exactly. Non-Waymo companies have the benefit of Google/Waymo taking care of many of these obstacles for them.

But they have the problem of getting solutions adapted to Waymo's strategy. They'll likely push for safety tests and requirements that they can pass; others will have to adapt to that.

> as Alphabet is not selling

They will license/sell it eventually when/if they will get it to work. What else would they do with that tech ? Last time I've checked Alphabet did not produce any cars or had any infrastructure to do that on scale.

I think cloud is google's first real diversification from Ads. Nobody looks at Waymo as a revenue center.

You have too short a time horizon on your "nobody".

Waymo is Google’s first AI robotics spinoff. That’s supposedly a (young) growth market.

Supposedly. I am skeptical that Waymo will ever execute a major deal. It's a real shame, the tech is really good, but Waymo just isn't very good at business (this is true about Alphabet in general; beyond ads, and maybe cloud).

XXX is not very good at business, except <several billion dollar product> and <several billion dollar product>.

They have tried and failed multiple dozen times to create new products. They're bad at business.

You could say maybe they’re bad at startups but good at growing established products.

There is truth to it. A friend of mine used the HUGE opportunity Alphabet os missing by failing to offer a service that allows to buy from vendors through Google only ising your Goovle account. Combine that with dropship and you have a potential Amazon-Killer in your pocket.

you're talking about Google Pay and Google Express

Maybe, my friend referred to the search results under shopping. But that's Europe.

Looking at the current news cycle, I think their huge lead is eventually going to get squandered away. George Hotz said Waymo is like Xerox PARC of Autonomous Tech. I think it's somewhere in between.They're somewhat like Fairchild Semiconductor. A lot of their great engineers have gone on to found their own companies. Be it Anton or Chris. Tesla already has the brand firepower on its side, to unknowingly create the perception that they're self-driving tech pioneers.

"but Waymo just isn't very good at business"

They can hire the right people but the problem might be trust. IMO, no major car company wants to deal with Google, they'll be enslaved to Google who will tighten the screws little by little.

Perhaps overlooked is that Waymo also is coming at self-driving from a very different angle than the car companies. Waymo, based on everything they've said and done, is focused on full autonomy even if that takes quite a few years to roll out broadly.

The auto makers are more than fine with incremental tech so long as it sells more cars. In some ways they may actually prefer it to the degree it accelerates upgrade cycles. Yes, there are issues with intermediate ~ Level 3 stages. But, in general, the car companies don't really care all that much about full self-driving and, arguably, would actually prefer if it hits the streets later rather than sooner.

I'm in total agreement. I told everybody at Waymo (back when it was part of X) that the car companies are fully incremental- they roll features out over years and push them down from the luxury models to the cheapies. They would far prefer to gain knowledge through incremental improvements each year.

The Waymo folks absorbed this, agreed, and said they would proceed towards full autonomy- I kind of get this, for example I don't even use cruise control and don't plan on using L3 autonomous because I worry about losing attentiveness and getting in an accident.

Whether (and you say 'arguably') they are actively preferring to slow down the rollout of full self-driving is hard to say; I think they're just cautious and don't want a few dramatic events to scuttle this promising area of research.

If they can crack that nut, they’ll have a crazy moat for a coupl years. And if they scale like hell in that moment, they might have a real brand on their hands.

And there’s no guarantee at all that the incremental approach will lead to the same place in a reasonable timeframe.

So, risks all around. And people playing to their strengths.

Having the best tech isn't a predictor of success. Just ask BetaMax and LaserDisk...

What matters more is the business strategy, and articles like this are suggesting that Waymo's business plan will keep it from dominating the market.

It turns out that trying to compete with your suppliers is very, very expensive, especially if you try to make them shoulder the risks without sharing the upsides. And very expensive business plans require very good execution, which Waymo hasn't managed so far. They've already been rejected by 3 automakers (Ford, GM, and Honda).

They don't need to be interested in selling off Waymo, because as we see in this very article they are interested in licensing Waymo tech to established players like Honda.

Funny that Google did this very thing to become the search and advertising giant it is today.

Isn't that exactly what a deal is?

This wouldn't be a loss for Waymo if everyone was licensing their software.

Wait so who is actually going to build the technology?

Cruise Automation presumably, which is owned by GM.

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