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Comment by minthd | Hacker News Reader

But why doesn't Apple doesn't try to create an UBER ?

For the same reason they don't make washing machines, or sell apples, or build houses - they believe their money is better spent on other things. Apple think they'll make more money in the long term innovating on consumer electronics.

That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an Apple car within 5 years of the first autonomous vehicles going on public sale.

Maybe we'll see an Apple car. But i suspect in general ,that self-driving cars and especially taxis would push the car market to derive much less value from branding and marketing and much more value from hardcore technology with design being much less a differentiator than today - at least for the mass market.

But even if Apple sells cars to 5% of the population , it could be a big business for them.

>i suspect in general ,that self-driving cars and especially taxis would push the car market to derive much less value from branding and marketing and much more value from hardcore technology with design being much less a differentiator than today

Why?

A lot of people have hypothesized that autonomous vehicles will drastically change the economics such that daily car sharing/rental will be cheaper than car ownership, and similarly convenient. This might in turn lead to a decline in car culture and personal car ownership. With a larger percentage of vehicles being owned by companies (or at least by individuals who are often loaning out their vehicle to the network), the distinguishing factors in the market may shift away from personal taste and lean more heavily on efficiency and safety and gadgetry.

A lot of hypothetical guesswork in there of course, but those are the kind of ideas I've heard lately on the matter.

I see where you are coming from, but I wonder if Apple will play it's "luxury brand" card and cater not so much to the masses but to the wealthy. Privately owned self driving cars will definitely be preferred among those with wealth in the future. Sort of like owning the latest iPhone, it will be a status symbol that will also attract those for whom the cost is illogical beyond status.

Also China.

So... in the future with all cars almost autonomous, I'm wondering will there be a resurgence in motorcycle touring culture?

I suspect Apple etc. will deliberately create a rental car status competition.

We already have rental car status competition. It's called a limo service.Not very popular.

What model of car was the last taxi you took? Did you pick that taxi because of its stylish design? In contrast, were you impressed that the driver knew a shortcut to avoid traffic by getting off one exit early and going through a parking garage?

Actually, I am surprised by how nice taxis are. I never find myself in an "old" taxi. But perhaps it's just that the heavy use wears the engine out before the exterior loses its shine.

Generally the interior is the first thing to get trashed.

Last taxi I took was an UberBlack Mercedes Benz. I paid extra because I prefer riding in a new and comfortable car to riding in a five year old Honda.

Just as the Mandarin Oriental doesn't compete with Motel 6, there will still be markets for a wide variety of cars at a wide variety of price points.

Isn't one big deterrent simply Apple's lack of data? Google, by contrast, has all the data it needs about riding habits, maps, etc

I don't follow the question. Why doesn't Walmart?

Apple(and Google) has unique advantages as the owners of the major platforms, and and major mapping apps, with access to all travel data. Those are major building blocks of such a travel service.

Mapping data isn't travel data. One is useful for representing the world, the other is only useful for marketing data.

What access does Apple have to travel data?

It has access to all the location data of each of it's users.

Except that they've made a big deal lately of differentiating themselves from Google by not using your data.

That's what I thought, unsure if it's true. But Tim Cook was making a big deal about the lack of data collection.

Because Apple is smarter than that... they will do what they do best...

Let someone work out the kinks, then step in and make it better...

Why waste all the money on all of this regulatory squabbling... let Uber and Lyft do that, give all the free rides, lose money to make this thing legal... then when it's legal, swoop in and take over...

It's not so simple. There are network effects at play(if we're talking about shared trips) - and those are hard to fight against , even for large companies like Google and Apple. This is why i think, Google is entering now - because UBER and Lyft started offering shared rides(which BTW grow rapidly).

Why does Google want it? It's simple. Google is an advertising company. The more free time you have where you have nothing but your phone or computer, the more time you'll spend searching for things, and therefore clicking on their ads. An average person with a 30+ minute commute would sure as hell do a lot of shopping if they didn't have to drive. While we are all waiting on self-driving cars, this is another step in that direction. They want to validate the idea that having people drive less means more profit for them.

Apple is not an advertising company, they are a consumer electronics company. You won't be buying more iPhones by driving less, so they don't benefit from self-driving cars or car pooling quite as much.

Why do people talk about Google being an advertising company when, while it's a significant fraction of current revenue, it's also only a small portion of their interests and investments.

The first time you hear it, it sounds surprising. Then someone explains about revenue and it makes sense. So then you want to share the cleverness.

Of course, it's actually a pretty shallow analysis, unsupported by the company's history and inconsistent with some of the company's current behavior. How useful is it really to consider Google as being in the same equivalence class as TBWA\CHIAT\DAY? Well never mind, the meme is sticky!

You are trolling right? What is Google then? What's the in-depth analysis? Do you consider them some altruistic non-profit that just happens to sell ads in order to fund their "let's improve humanity" efforts?

Take a look at these:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/06/apple-google-microsoft-revenue-sou...

http://www.statista.com/statistics/266471/distribution-of-go...

https://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-earnings

Notice how even last year 89.5% of Google's revenue is straight up advertising. What else would you call them?

Or if you don't buy this argument let's try it by comparison. Is Zappos a shoe store? For sure, they did things differently and focuses on happiness of employees and customer satisfaction, but at the end of the day, they sell shoes. They have an interest in people buying more shoes and if they could, they'd certainly do something to make people buy more shoes. Substitute Google and ads in those two sentences. Just because they spend some minute portion of their profits on other projects doesn't make them anything but an ad company, even if they are a much more innovative ad company than the others you mentioned.

OK, Google is an ad company with a lot of hobbies. Better?

How about Google is a tech company that happens to sell ads. Better?

Hmm, no. Considering them an ad company helps to keep what they do for money on the forefront. Trying to push it down as some ancillary activity makes sense if you're marketing for Google, but not in any other situation.

It's difficult to tell whether you're a troll or just very attached to a single perspective. Yes, it makes sense to look at Google as primarily an ad company in some contexts--for instance, attempting to understand their business model. In other senses, Google has done a lot to distance themselves from being just an ad company, diversifying in image, product, talent, markets, and company culture. Probably more, but I don't know too much about the intricacies of what Google actually innovated on. Just by doing this, yes, I do think it is inherently dishonest to group them with other entities that do just resell web space. And I do not think that Google would cease to exist if people boycotted advertised products tomorrow, either, because their grasp of tech culture is so strong. People will always need analytics, retargeting, and profiling, so reducing an entire company to advertisers is downright insulting. Just the competition to ios alone has irreversibly changed the future of smartphones, mostly for the better.

Hell, just the market value of Google's brand is enough to distinguish them. You cannot buy that trust, you earn it by providing more value than an advertising brand could.

I am not using ads since somewhere mid 2009. For me they couldn't be less related to advertising. This is why I see them as a tech company.

I liked the first one.

> while it's a significant fraction of current revenue

That's why. They aren't doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts. If there's no money involved, at least tangentially, it's not something they are going to do.

Yea, but it's not like they are dedicated to making money advertising. They're dedicated to making money, period, and advertising is just the current mechanism.

"Ford is dedicated to making money. Making cars is just a way of doing that, so they are not a car company."

I'm tempted to agree. :)

Because right now they are an advertising company as their other investments are not significant revenue drivers, or are meant to provide additional audience data for advertising.

All of their interests and investments are all justified because it either drives people to look at advertisements or it generates more information about the users to make their ad platform more valuable.

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