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Comment by mslate | Hacker News Reader

As it happened with plane tickets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software), it is happening with car insurance. Insurance is the most expensive vertical in terms of CPC (http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords) simply because it's a very high-margin business and the market for car insurance leads is very hot.

The most successful participants in the car insurance leads marketplace (and any leads marketplace TBH) do things that are inherently consumer-unfriendly to achieve as high margins as they do. Will Google do those things? No.

So will Google see as much to gain from cutting out these players as they would from allowing these players to pay for AdWords? Eh, we’ll see.

Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then.

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This is on point.

This will likely be good for consumers and only hurt middlemen who sell leads like Bankrate.com

> Self-driving cars are far, far off, leaving billions of retail dollars on the table between now and then.

5-7 years is far, far off?

Yes, it's only a matter of time before Google moves into mortgages, attorneys, and hosting. Which in some ways could be ok if done right. There was some dissent when they moved into flights, but I'm starting to like their flight search as much as Kayak's if not more.

It could be beneficial to the user if Google helps to use it's ranking and review algorithm to help choose the best items for complicated products with tons of variables. They have the algorithm brains, why not apply it to other markets?

Would I rather choose from the 3 attorneys who paid the most to be at the top of the paid search ads, or have Google show me 10 based on their ranking?

Yes, yes it is--but your off-hand estimate does not do the situation any justice.

My "off-hand estimate" is from multiple sources:

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car...

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-the-future-of-dr...

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits...

The idea of you driving your car is essentially dead. Vehicle miles driven per year is already stagnent due to boomers retiring and millennials not having the same inclination for cars as generations past have.

Passenger cars sit idle 95% of the time. Its not going to take many autonomous vehicles to replace the current fleet with existing utilization so low.

Many people want to be without the company of strangers in their commute => a self-driving car will, on average, not carry more passengers than cars do now.

Most people want/have to arrive at work in a relatively short timeframe (7-9 or thereabouts)

Combining that with a 30 minute commute, the average autonomous car will be able to drive 2-3 people to and from work each day. It also will have to drive 1.5-2.5 times the distance per passenger (into town, back to pick up the second passenger, into town again for two passengers, another round trip for the third)

I think that will be a net win, but it will be less than that 95% idle figure hints at.

That net win will decrease traffic jams tremendously, though. It is anybody's guess what that will mean. On the one hand, ride times could go down, and automated cars could be able to make another round trip during peak hours.

On the other hand, people could move farther out into the suburbs, offsetting that. That is a serious possibility, as you could start working/shaving/brushing your teeth/reading/playing on your Xbox during your commute. If that happens, chances are that those who can afford it will want to own their own self-driving car, so that they can stock it with things they may want to use during their commute.

I think the latter is a serious possibility. Because of that, I am not sure we will see a decrease in the number of cars.

Although slightly off topic, you are missing a key point when you bring up the idle time of passenger cars. Passenger travel is not uniformly distributed throughout the day. There are peak times where extremely high bandwidth (everyone gets in their car in the morning to go to work and then again to go home at ~8am and ~5pm respectively) is needed. While ride shares will be easier with autonomous cars, we still cannot reduce current fleets by the amount you are hinting at with your '95%' estimate.

Personal car insurance services will be a multi-billion dollar marketplace beyond 7 years from now.

On the face of it, it sounds like you are steering the conversation towards what you'd rather talk about, which is fine. Just be forthright about it. There are bigger threats to the profitability of car insurance lead gen in the short and long term.

I would expect it to go like electric cars. Maybe in 5-10 years you will be able to buy a high-end one, but the time to a majority having one will be double that, at least.

If I can get a self-driving Model S on Uber whenever I want, why would I buy a car?

Yeah, when that day comes, it will be nice. We just disagree on how soon it will be.

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