What does Waymo get out of this? It seems to me like if the value proposition in self driving is there (privacy, consistency, etc), people would be willing to download another app? Especially once word of mouth goes through.
Plus currently the Waymo app has neat features (when the car is on its way to you, it shows you stuff like when it's stopped at a red light or whatever) that Uber probably can't replicate due to API access issues.
I can see Uber drivers sitting in front of computers taking over from the autonomous system to provide a pseudo autonomous experience.
Uber drivers would also need to be trained to do this and Uber needs to setup facilities for this. I don’t believe this is likely.
Waymo sends physical human drivers to a car if the Waymo driver (software) is stuck. Remote humans can reach into the model to fix e.g. label problems (e.g the driver thinks this is a pedestrian but it's actually a life size cardboard Captain Picard, thus it's not a problem to drive very close to it) but they cannot drive the car.