[scarmig]

This just represents how much corporate DNA can affect outcomes down the road.

Uber grew up on saying fuck you to government regulations. And it worked for them, because the only real losers were taxi cartels, and as much as I hate Uber, taxis were ten thousand times worse (in SF), which is more or less widely agreed on AFAICT. But it fails at dealing with the problem of autonomous vehicles, which is an existential threat to Uber. This is why Uber won't exist a decade from now.

Google grew up and succeeded through throwing lots of engineers at problems and building close, incestuous alliances with the government and academia, to avoid undue negative attention. This has plenty of downsides, but it's definitely the only plausible winning approach for getting autonomous cars actually on the road.