Xerox PARC existed with relatively little pressure to ship. They gave us many of the components of the modern tech industry. Their contributions were greater than perhaps any other epicenter for the computer revolution.

Xerox didn't benefit massively from the creations at PARC (a tiny fraction of what others did), and I'm entirely ok with that. I do not particularly care about the existence of the Xerox Corporation. Just as I'm ok with Google vaporizing $10 billion on Waymo and failing, if it helps push this technology forward in the process. Worst case scenario, over time Waymo will spin out hundreds of experienced employees that will go on to plant other technology seeds all over the place.

Google has $120 billion in cash, $35b in operating income, $160 billion in sales, a monopoly or two, and I do not care if they get punched in the face to the tune of $10 billion in losses on autonomous driving. The only thing that matters is that their expenditures move the ball forward. Maybe some start-up that doesn't exist yet, formed by ex Waymo employees two years from now, will be the company that builds a better Waymo. That'll be great.

I'd also rather that $10 billion go into engineer pockets and get deployed into the economy rather than sit in Google's monopoly money vault yielding jack squat interest, de facto being hoarded. Google has little idea what to do with their money, they're a trillion dollar corporation with not much imagination. I'm glad they're burning cash on something interesting.

For self-driving tech, where people's lives are at stake, it's critical to get things right by exceeding the safety record of human drivers. Increased pressure to ship doesn't seem like the right strategy for that to happen.