Google Cloud made $864M in profit in a single quarter, more than ever before.
Google Bets lost $863M in the same period, much less than ever before.
Google Bets lost $863M in the same period, much less than ever before.
The core concept is being proven pretty well, in markets with good weather and good roads at least... whether they can achieve some sort of critical mass that allows them to recoup any of the investment, even on a single capitalized vehicle... who knows. I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded... that's a lot of ~$14-on-average trips before breakeven, and obviously the trips aren't free.
That all being said, riding in one feels like the actual future, and if they close in on this first-mover advantage and keep on keeping on, and strengthen their Uber integration, and open in more and more markets... there's a real chance they establish themselves and make this thing actually capture a significant portion of the trip economy.
That being said, it's not generalized, so opening markets is expensive because they're all individually trained for each mile of road in the market, I expect they'll be functionally useless in bad winters (but that's not a dealbreaker, per se), and those operating expenses remain high. Though I do expect we'll begin to see those lower, now that they're so deep into the proof of the concept. (They're finally starting highway driving here in PHX, which is really the last hill to climb.)
But for it to work, that entity will have to have ultimate control over where the vehicle goes. Everybody is going to want to have that ultimate control, and not cede it to someone else. That would make licensing not really work out since Google would retain control.
If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?
Not yet...
> If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?
Because Uber isn't an advertising company. They're still chasing fares like scrubs
> why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it
They are already most of the way there [1]. Driverless vehicles will be cheaper to operate which will make physical locations more amenable to paying to acquire visitors.
They said it costs as much as a “moderately equipped S-Class” 3-4 years ago. At the time, that would be ~$140k. That includes the base car cost, sensor hardware, compute, redundant vehicle systems and their integration. So not quite $250k, but still steep. I think the Waymo-Geely robotaxis coming next year will be interesting cost-wise.
> That being said, it's not generalized, so opening markets is expensive because they're all individually trained for each mile of road in the market
This is a misconception. The Waymo Driver is, in fact, designed to be generalizable. There some steps like mapping and initial validation in each market, but the same software runs on Waymo vehicles in every city. It’s definitely not individually trained for each mile in each market.
Oh, that's very interesting. Being in the test/training market, and having read that they were training on every mile while they were here, I thought that was a key differentiator, but if it _is_ generalizable, that's absolutely huge.
(And living here, during training, we'd see trains of 5-6 Waymos cruising down the streets of our neighborhood, so it kind of tracked with what I'd already heard from their videos and posts.)
Thanks for the correction. It's amazing what they've accomplished, and it's also a blast to show out-of-towners who have no idea this is _widely available_ here in Phoenix.
My math says that's about 25 trips per day to break even in two years (modulo maintenance costs).
Google expanded testing in Buffalo, NY in November 2023, including new sensor hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1aedrmy/ne...
It makes sense to start with easier markets to a certain extent...though SF is definitely not an easy market in terms of urban design/clutter. It would've been way easier for them to follow up Phoenix with Vegas.
If they can handle SF, then aside from weather they can probably handle just about any other city in the US.
So you can make a pretty big business just pretending winter doesn't exist.
I switched to more or less only using Waymo for ride-share in SF after I got into the beta last year, and almost without exception every Uber or Lyft ride I have had to take since then for timing, availability, or route reasons has been some kind of debacle. Ranging from just an unclean and odd-smelling car to a ride my partner and I had to end early with the "pull over now" button when the clearly intoxicated driver missed multiple exits and slid on and off the highway median figuring out what to do.
By the way, that driver was a "Platinum" tier driver per the Uber app. I reported what happened in detail in a message to support, specifically using the safety issue area of the app, and got back an automated message explaining to me that my credit card charge differed from the amount shown onscreen because the ride ended early. I have previously ranted at length on HN about the nasty dark patterns Lyft uses to attempt to trick you into using their "priority pickup", which is always slower than promised and condescends to you with fake "just a few more seconds" messages while it waits for a driver. Recently, my Uber app has begun auto-selecting Black cars for no conceivable reason, except that it does this after 10pm on the weekends when it's more likely I'm in a rush and/or sleepy and/or intoxicated.
The user experience of Uber and Lyft has gotten so poor it feels like outright hostility from these apps towards the users. I've certainly had multiple drivers who behaved outright hostile to their customers. By comparison, the Waymo experience is perfect.
Experiencing Waymo has also altered my standards. Now I really notice how often the car is dirty and unkempt, stinks of pot or cigarette smoke, or the tire light is on, or the driver is handling the car poorly. Waymo is usually the same price, and none of that ever happens. If they pull this off I don't see the business model for human based rideshare surviving unless the cost of AV rides skyrockets once they need to be independently commercially viable.
I also live right off the highway, so I think I am more prone to getting people who pick up my ride on the way to or from somewhere else and then get upset about where they have to go. Pretty much the only place I need an Uber to these days is over the bridge to the East Bay when BART is not realistic, which is usually because I'm in a rush. One of my recent trips I wound up late anyway, because the first driver who pulled into my complex explained to me "because the uber app gives me these bad rides" I should cancel the ride for him, and pay a fee, because it was so unreasonable for me to expect him to deliver me to the destination I had called the ride for.
Edit: on another bridge trip, my driver was excited to show me his 'tiktok famous' friend on his dash mounted iPad while we went over the bridge. Diamond driver, perfect rating, surfing social media with one hand and steering with the other. Maybe Waymo has just made me picky and most rideshare users now expect to share use of an iPad with the driver in traffic
On the other hand though, I have seen misplaced items in Waymos a couple times and when I reported them in the app they pulled the car for cleaning ASAP. I actually did leave a water bottle once - a disposable, single use one - and they emailed me asking me if I wanted them to return it! That kind of vehicle management feels more like a benefit inherent to centralized taxi fleets than a benefit inherent to AVs, but it's something Waymo can take advantage of. I would guess the in-car cameras would be capable of detecting vomit-related events etc too.
I didn't know they had those. Wonder if they'll eventually add a mode where you could opt-in to livestream games like Cash Cab or Carpool Karaoke. Would make the commutes more interesting :D
Cruise attempted to just start launching before the tech was really finished and it backfired horribly. Tesla is still doing Elon things, looks like the tech is mostly spinning its wheels as they work on yet another hardware revision that'll definitely handle self-driving this time.
"Other Bets, which includes the Waymo self-driving car business and the Verily life sciences unit, reported revenue of $657 million, up from $226 million the year prior. Its loss narrowed to $863 million from $1.24 billion."
So revenue up 400 million, and losses dropped by 400 million.
Public companies can structure their business however they prefer. If the story needs to be that Cloud is growing and profitable on a numbers sheet, you need no more than the finance geeks to make it happen.
Market beating returns: Alpha. Long bets – Bet. Alphabet.
People in cloud are profoundly unhappy. It's scary.
A little bit more Amazon/Oracle, a little less traditional 'Google'. I think most people work 45 hours a week. I don't see anyone slacking off. But it's not a death march, it pays well, there are tons of perks still.
shrug It's not some magical fantasy land that some people make google out to be, but it's a nice job with interesting problems, smart coworkers, and it pays well.
You don't understand why people fear the culture changing to something else? Most people there like the Google work culture, of course they would fear the culture becoming more like Microsoft or Oracle.
When I worked at Google I had no deadlines, full control over what I do during my work days, full ability to prioritize different projects or help people get things done if they ask etc. If that suddenly changed it would feel horrible, as you can understand, if you are used to a typical work culture maybe you don't see it but if you are used to the typical Google one they at least had before then it is a massive owngrade.
However, Cloud seems pretty intent on shipping and meeting deadlines so if we commit, I do feel pressure to make that deadline.
I don't see any likely path by which Kurian would become CEO of Alphabet.