They couldn't bang out a social network over the last decade(s), I hardly believe they could bang out anything than keep extracting more money from the dying ad industry
Very different. Social networks value derives from network effect - every additional user adds additional value to the ecosystem. Google simply started too late.
Taxis compete on price, safety, quality of service. Virtually all of this value derives from the quality of the FSD implementation. Of course, this will extend to all forms of road transportation eventually. It is going to very much be a winner takes all situation for a number of years (perhaps a decade). The next phase will be a period of high fragmentation as the technology becomes commoditized and a race to the bottom will ensue. The final phase will be consolidation with a few players being best at execution, cost control and finance operations.
>Google could bang out a ride booking app in a weekend.
Google's culture isn't really built around providing human support to users. I believe there is also lots of onboarding involved for restaurants so Google may struggle there.
With that said, I am constantly hit up by outsourced Google reps for Adwords + Firebase but I think the average customer has a much higher transaction volume with much better margins than a restaurant would.
According to Linkedin 54% of Uber employees (48,000) are in operations roles.[0]
I suppose some of these could be drivers, but I believe Uber's biggest department is operations, which is one of the reasons it's so expensive to enter new markets. Can't scale operations in the same way you can scale development.
Google would have to do something similar to launch their own ride-share app powered by Waymo, so could make sense to just keep Uber in the middle.
Maybe not, but a human at Uber responded within 15 minutes when a ride I had booked drove away from me just before pickup. They canceled the original booking with no fee, then sent another car to pick me up and gave me some Uber credits.
That's 1000% better customer service than I'd ever expect from big G. Google would probably charge me a cancellation fee for not taking the trip, shut down my account for having the temerity to complain I'd been stranded, and then followed up with automated email confirming they made the right decision after review.
Agreed. I’m not sure an acquisition makes sense for Waymo/Alphabet. Operating a robotaxi is technologically quite different from an Uber vehicle — mapping is different, routing is different, customer service is different (a Waymo is stuck and needs remote assistance), maintenance is different (charging, cleaning in depots). Uber’s platform wouldn’t help with any of that.
This seems like a play to attract users from the most popular ridehail platform and eventually funnel them to the Waymo app. I don’t believe users are loyal to ridehail apps like they are to social networks (I don’t use Uber because my friends use it) and would jump to a service that is cost competitive and autonomous. Or, as I said another comment, maybe they are setting the stage to be just a technology provider to ridehail companies and let them deal with all the operational overhead.
Seems like but then why the interest from Waymo in an Uber partnership? They already have the Waymo One app. I think it’s because getting users to switch or use multiple apps proves difficult.
Or put it in Google Maps if they had any sense. They should know when to recommend ride hailing with high accuracy to those who enable location history, and they can skip the clunky app switching that other ride hailing services require.
