While...
"'Space-based applications, like imaging satellites, can help people more easily access important information, so we’re excited to support SpaceX’s growth,' Google spokesman Aaron Stein said in a statement."
It's nice when Google does things that benefit a lot of people, but they're a for-profit corporation and not motivated primarily by altruism. People might not fully understand that or its significance and simply enjoy Google products, but I think it's useful knowledge.
Because that's the part I'd find hard to believe.
My takeaway was that many people produce warm feelings about an entity that doesn't necessarily reciprocate or find those warm feelings important in it of themselves.
I personally like Google (so far). E.g. I could have seen them siding with ISPs, trying to dismantle net neutrality, and using their capital to stifle innovation keeping them at the top.
But if sometime in the future, Google enacts policies that aren't so "nice", people may do well to avoid confusion by remembering that Google isn't inherently "nice", but they are inherently "for-profit".
> Why do self driving cars? Def no ad revenue there.
Sure there is. Many people commute in their cars for 1-2 hours per day, when it is illegal for them to look at ads on their smartphone. If Google makes this legal, it's another 10%ish increase in the waking hours that people may be clicking on their ads.
I think that Google's ambitions are a lot higher than this, of course. Self-driving cars will be a lucrative business for them in numerous ways. And increased ad revenue will be one of them.
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure such a roundabout benefit even comes up in management's eyes compared to the difficulty of getting self-driving cars working and on the roads, but it is one.
Mostly because, freight and passenger trains interfere badly. No passengers = easier freight. A big wave of deregulation of the market a few decades ago helped, too. The Economist ran a special about the US market a few years ago.
As for self driving cars, I can think of a ton of marketing use cases including tracking how often people drive, where they go, how long they stay there, the frequency in which someone goes to a location, what type of features in the car the user takes advantage of...
And that's just from the top of my head in 30 seconds. I'm sure the marketing kids at Google can think of far more ways to milk you.
The alternative is massive problems in a few years, when somebody has the guts to kickstart a consumer laptop that comes with adblock preinstalled.
Android (and iOS) make it (intentionally?) much harder to install adblock than any pc browser.
No ad revenue. But there's lots of car revenue.
Show popups ads of ongoing/upcoming events of the current street you are on. Going to the movie theatre, recommend a nearby lunch spot. Feeling lucky? Let the car plan your weekend
This bring huge potential to ads
Imagine how many more hours a day you'll have to look at your android device when you don't have to pay attention to driving to and from work? Or going on road trips.
Even if you have some other intrinsic motive, you gotta pay your employees with money, and you gotta get that money form somewhere.