Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility in Pittsburgh to Build Self-Driving Cars
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It will be interesting to see which one can commodize the other. I feel that what Google has built (self-driving cars) is harder to replicate, but Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does.
If Android is any guide, Google would rather spread their innovation around to partners rather than to use it to build a killer first party product. I imagine Google will license their future self driving-car stack to the existing car manufacturers, Uber, et al.
Tesla perhaps?
Yep, but I feel like one significantly outclasses the other as a research facility. Will be interesting to see what happens.
>>but Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does.
Why do you say that about the most visited site in the world? Genuine question.
Every time Google comes up with a high quality product (Google Now, Inbox, Maps), they do everything they can to ship it on iOS as well as Android. If it wasn't for Apple, Google Now & Maps would be just as good on iOS as on Android. Google doesn't use their cloud service advantages as a weapon to make Android better than iOS. They just want their technology in front of everyone, no matter what they use.
I see self driving cars as a similar market. Google wants self driving cars to happen. There are lots of good reasons, but from their perspective it is both a play for even more data, and it increases the amount of time we have to use Google products. I can look at ads even longer if I don't have to drive on my commute. Thus for them doesn't it make sense to license/give away all of that tech to everybody? It doesn't matter who manufacturers the car, so long as it uses Google's car software.
Thus, plenty of companies will make self driving cars using Google's software. Thus Uber will have plenty of access to self driving cars.
If Google was more focused on killing Uber, they would hoard the self driving software for their 1st party initiative. I imagine if Uber invents self driving tech, no one else is getting it. They are far more interested in the core product of driving people from A to B.
It's a bit of 'commodize your compliments' and the two companies respective business model. Google operates a scorched earth campaign of making everything around ad supported internet as cheap or free as possible. Uber and Apple are building businesses around charging money for the product they make directly.
I don't know about that - the Windows Phone people are pretty bitter about Google's current stance (no maps, no youtube, no hangouts).
Apple maps? Your statement used to be true, but not anymore.
It's just that a huge bunch of money goes to whoever who controls those.
Meanwhile, Uber will be spending money researching their core business and will keep pressing on with shipping, consumer-focused products.
I mean, other than the ridesharing thing, what other consumer focused products have Uber shipped? You can't really make a good prediction based on one thing, right?
Uber is a private company and a growing one at that. It is expected to lose money. It can go all in without anyone but its private investors questioning it - private investors who want it to do whatever it can for a $100B IPO
Google is yet to display the aggressive expand-at-all-costs philosophy of Uber. Despite all those privacy concerns, I still believe that many of the guys at Google believe that "Don't be Evil" mantra. It also helps that the guys who've been in charge so far - Page, Brin and Schmidt - are, at heart, nerds who just love technology. Page and Brin are mostly accidental businessmen - they were doing their PhDs, not trying to build the next Microsoft.
Kalanick and the guys running Uber seem to be more about business than technology. Nothing wrong with that, of course. This gives them the killer 'profit at all costs' instinct OP describes.
Plus, Google does about 10 things (maps, Android, search, Devices, Plus, video, cloud services, productivity software, Chrome, Chrome OS, autonomous cars, etc.). Uber does only one thing. That helps it to focus - a key ingredient of 'killer instinct'
Note: Not arguing that Apple's strategy was unsuccessful in the least, but Google wouldn't have been able to beat Apple at their own game (integrated hardware-software luxury-branded product) at the time of the iPhone/Android release.
It's amazing to see Samsung in so much trouble now that Apple has released the iPhone 6/6+. They have lost a staggering amount of profit in only a few months.
Samsung may have lost some market share and profits when the iPohne 6 was launched, but it really started bleeding when it stopped any pretense at innovation, and it just kept iterating on the ugly design of Galaxy S3 and the bloatmess of Touchwizz. Galaxy S5 was considered a failure. Because of that Samsung intends to "rebuilt everything from scratch" with Galaxy S6. It's not because of the iPhone 6.
Not that there aren't other important factors for Android's success, as even relatively expensive Android phones are quite competitive with iPhones in market-share. But even if you assume it is just price, that is an argument in favor of the multi-vendor strategy, not against.
Glass was purposely priced out of the range of consumers. It was meant as an experimental platform only.
Still, it would have been priced higher than relative high end Android phones, have worse specs than mid-level phones and be perhaps better only in consistency and software-hardware integration (did I just accidentally describe the Nexus line?). It would not have beaten Apple at its own game and without a larger market-share and more friendly developer terms, it would not have had enough apps to achieve critical mass (and now I seem to be describing the Windows Phone...).
[1]https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...
There's always been a big disparity between the market share and web usage share of Android vs. iOS: http://blog.cloudfour.com/explaining-the-ios-and-android-mob...
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
You could mix in data from browsers (how many people browse near a wifi point that they have connected to with their browser, but don't connect with their wifi? how many people browse in the evening/morning but not connected to wifi?)
There's probably a wealth of demographic data they could correlate through gmail content and/or chrome browsing trends to correlate user income level, although I don't know if Google has privacy controls in place that makes sharing this data between divisions possible.
Strategy Analytics : Android at 85% (http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/07/31/android-reached-reco...)
Looking at our web stats across our clients, android isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to iOS.
Having a large market share in third world countries who won't buy your app isn't much of a win.
>> ask Whatsapp. :)
Also, there is a severe desire of everyone to buy an iPhone -- so they just lag behind a lot. You can buy a pre-jailbroken iPhone 4G for around $100 here.
Pretty sure the large market share in third world countries also doesn't care about your win either. They just have Android phones. Not sure if it is Google's win, users' win or OEM's that make the hardware's win. Kind of a mix perhaps.
Android thrived because shelling out a month's salary on phones is a losing proposition in third world countries (which have the majority of phone uses)
Sure, plenty of people like iPhones and plenty of people would swap, but I know a lot of people who really don't like iOS and are far happier with a high end android
But not in India, a third world country, as OP makes the point. Majority of Android budget range here is ₹5000 ($90) to ₹15000 (~$300). Where as an iPhone costs ₹53,500.
Now i really want to understand the forces in play, that help the iphone reap such gigantic profits :)
Then there is the annoying fact that as soon as a new iPhone comes out, the old ones get slow/ start crashing Every single iPhone my family has had (sample size of fifteen, starting from the original phone) has had this issue.
Edit: the other big issue was the iPhone's lack of multitasking. For the longest time it wasn't possible to do something as trivial playing Pandora while reading HN.
To be fair, Android has contributed to Google's core business by massively expanding the reach of their search ads...or so the story goes.
Its a win if it is preventing a competitor from getting the kind of dominance in a market that is key to delivery of a product on which you do make money (like, in Google's case, mobile platforms are to online advertising) that they could use to extract rents that would cut into those profits.
Chrome and Android don't need to make money directly to be successful, they just need to be popular enough that other browser or mobile OS vendors can't use their position to cut off Google's advertising revenues.
You need more than "killer instinct" to match a decade of research in autonomous vehicles.
What you call "killer instinct" I would call delusional or "dumb money".
They do have a serious advantage, but a the vast majority of benefits of this decade of research is not developed and kept by Google in-house. Key parts of it are either included in non-core components (sensor hardware, commodity electronics) that are used also in other applications (such as computer vision applications in manufacturing industry robotics) and Uber can simply buy that from other companies; or in publicly available academic research and data resources.
In terms of actual competitive advantage in self-driving cars, I'd say that Google has the following things - (a) a vast store of high-precision mapping and laser scan data that nobody else has; (b) a 1 (2?) year gap in pure research between what they have and what has been openly published by someone; and (c) a bunch of engineering expertise and experimentation experience that Uber doesn't have but some others do -e.g. many major car manufacturers. An impressive gap, but one that can be overcome in acouple years if you're serious about it.
Who?
All demos that I've seen from Mercedes Benz, BMW, Toyota, Volvo, etc. were generations behind google. The self-parking car seemed to be their most impressive feat so far.
Meanwhile Google Car is commuting in live city traffic, without anyone touching the wheel.
I would put that on the same league as Google's.
Google's spent a lot of money in a lot of different areas, but I haven't been terribly impressed by their output. Google glasses seems to be a good example about how they can excite people before release and then stumble when the product actually comes out (though this is an issue with a lot of tech companies).
Google just has better advertising because that is Google's core business.
Sadly, as much legislative power as Google may have, I think we may be in an age where its easier to create the technology of self-driving cars then to get through the political/regulatory red-tape that UBER has been fighting through for years. That's probably an exaggeration, but given the how many other companies are dabbling in the self-driving space now, it may be less innovative than a few years back. On the other hand, I don't thing political/regulatory barriers are any easier to get through.
At least we have two big players trying to solve a big problem, so hopefully we'll benefit in the end.
The Play Store terms range from absurd to downright ridiculous.
[0] http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/google-open-when-convenient... [1] http://marketingland.com/acer-incident-revives-conspiracy-th...
[1] https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub2/thorpe_charles_1988_1/...
[2] https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub3/thorpe_charles_1988_1/...
Their LIDAR was very advanced. They had a 2-axis scanning LIDAR, with one rotating and one nodding mirror. So they had full 3D depth images. Most of the DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles only had line scanners.
I'm not sure a "partnership" qualifies as "cleaning out".
Besides governments in other countries (since I assume US will stay "wild capitalism" for longer than others) can just call an open competition for such controlled network management services and then be semi-controlled by that government.
It's not like google or anyone gonna have full actual control over who goes where even when/if such system will exist.
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/february/uber-...
"Uber and Carnegie Mellon University are announcing today a strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus. ... The agreement also will include funding from Uber for faculty chairs and graduate fellowships."
Talk about a moral paradox.
Also I doubt taxi driver stays taxi driver because of all alternative opportunities he has.
Technology killing jobs is a real problem, technology killing jobs in an increasingly faster and faster pace is an even bigger problem as it doesn't allow people to re-educate themselves.
It's a much much much bigger problem than you seem to imply.
Can you point to any time in history where that actually occurred on a large scale? Genuinely interested.
(Not all of farming is menial, but a lot of it is and it was much less sophisticated than it is today).
(Edited 90 --> 75.)
We aren't just talking about automation of physical things we are also talking about automation of intelligence based tasks.
Also people often bring out the horse carriages as an example of how the people who controlled those just went on to become car drivers instead but the horses they never found new occupation.
Automation is replacing higher and higher levels of thinking and that is the problem. Its not just going to compete with you for your physical abilities but your mental ones. That's the big deal and thats where we are headed.
Driverless cars illuminates that point quite substantially.
I believe there will eventually have to be a minimum income that is given to every adult. There will be many people choosing not to work who are fine living off this minimum income. There will also of course be those who would rather work but whose skills are obsolete.
Uber's problem is that this is a big public announcement. And so what you have to be wondering is what all the Uber drivers are going to be thinking about their future today with Uber. There biggest problem in the next 5 years if they keep announcing self-driving car stuff could very well end up being that their competitors have an easy time poaching all their drivers.
I don't see how this is any different from factories replacing low skill labor with robots. As libertarian as it sounds, I would point the finger at drivers who think of driving as a 'career'.
[1] http://www.bridj.com/ [2] https://www.bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2015/...
(I have no association with the company.)
If they quit, what should they do to pay the bills in the mean time?
It's pure, emotionless capitalism. Labour is now a commodity like any other. Depending who you ask, this is either the harbinger of a widening wage gap and the poverty that accompanies it, or a long-overdue development which paves the way for optimum efficiency.
Basically, do "flash strikes" for 30 minutes at at time.
It would work like this: Uber drivers install an app to join the union, and when the union decides to "strike", it sends a message to all drivers in the union. The drivers cancel all rides for some short period of time, say, 30 minutes, and then they resume driving like normal. This driver outage would be disruptive to Uber in terms of user experience, but it wouldn't be long enough to replace the striking workers.
You'd have to somehow get 100% penetration, not only among current Uber drivers but among all potential Uber drivers in the area, before doing anything. Doesn't sound feasible, especially since anyone who declines to participate will make a killing.
It's pointless, because someone at some point will launch the self-driving version of Uber.
Also, Surge Pricing would make it difficult to get everyone to hold out for the strike.
Except that 100% of drivers have a smartphone on a public network.
Virtually all firms are going to invest in optimal production/service methodologies in order to stay competitive and capture the largest margins. In the (somewhat) near term, that means replacing a whole lot human labor with automation. But until then, there is still a job there to be done and a lot of people that would like to have the money for doing it.
With that said, I don't disagree that the long-term career prospects of taxi driving are plummeting. I think many other careers are nearing their expiration dates as well, though I may be overly pessimistic...
Neither Uber nor Google have ANY experience making cars. They aren't the simplest products to sell. Complex regulations that varies city by city, state by state, country by country. And even then the minute you become successful the existing car manufacturers will simply jump into the market and swallow you whole.
Uber drivers have absolutely nothing to worry about.
[0] http://www.cnet.com/news/a-ride-in-volvos-autonomous-car-how...
I don't know how many Google Maps cars Google has, but if car manufacturers got serious about data collection, there's no way Google could compete with the scale of their installed user base.
Most of what Google is doing with their self-driving car is not a difficult software or AI problem, they've simply built extremely, extremely detailed maps of a limited subset of roads: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/google-self-driving-car-maps/
Contrast that with the DARPA challenges, where a car needed to navigate unpredictable off-road terrain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
Doing it Google's way, you need some sensors and onboard processing, but the amount of hardware is actually pretty minimal compared to Carnegie Mellon's self-driving cars. Most of the fancy hardware is for making the maps, not driving the car.
First Uber isn't going to actually ever do this - programming is not their core competency, and they don't make enough to fund it for the length of time necessary.
Second it'll be decades before there are self driving cars, so the drivers can make money in the meantime.
Third, once the cars do arrive they will start with long distance highway trips, which is not what Uber does.
It is not high difficulty engineering projects. Their app and website are pretty straightforward stuff.
For a self driving car you need completely different people.
Uber is just not well equipped for this. They could do it certainly (throw enough money at it), but their risk/reward is not in the right place.
(But it I mean setup a research team and at least type, I don't expect a self driving car for decades. Maybe a sort of road train that only drives on pre-marked routes would happen first.)
This is a fight over the businesses of logistics and transportation in general, and on a global scale. You can expect Amazon to join the fight. This is not limited to driving people across town, and winning is vastly more valuable. Nobody is going to hold back.
Humans can be pretty irrational, and law unfortunately isn't enacted in the science lab. We'll just have to wait and see who wins on the political level.
It's already happening, and they seem to be working pretty well. The most difficult issue is going to be politians.