I think my confusion is more about Uber’s incentives here. They’re providing a ramp-up platform for Waymo as you described, but as soon as it hits any scale Waymo can easily part ways.
Uber gets to introduce driverless cars finally (an old promise of theirs) without the costs of owning or developing hardware, and use that as leverage over drivers.
I don't think Uber has anything to fear from Waymo:
(1) It will take years for Waymo to ramp up to "independence" scale. How many cars do they have now, and how many would they need? How long will it take them to negotiate new regulations with every city and state? 5 years?
(2) This deal is probably not exclusive. Uber can strike a similar deal with Cruise as well. Uber becomes the Amazon of driving services, a platform gating access, with all the data.
(3) Having a big money company behind them is good. And if Waymo acquires Uber in 3 years, it's not necessarily a bad thing for Uber.
Waymo maybe could have gone with Lyft (or built their own app) if the deal with Uber fell through, which is probably why Uber accepted it. It's not "help Waymo get to market or not," it's "help Waymo get to market or risk somebody else (or Waymo themselves) passing on Waymo's value to customers and taking the market." Especially with the chance that Uber might get to play gatekeeper in the future, it's a hard deal to turn down.
I don't think Uber has anything to fear from Waymo:
(1) It will take years for Waymo to ramp up to "independence" scale. How many cars do they have now, and how many would they need? How long will it take them to negotiate new regulations with every city and state? 5 years?
(2) This deal is probably not exclusive. Uber can strike a similar deal with Cruise as well. Uber becomes the Amazon of driving services, a platform gating access, with all the data.
(3) Having a big money company behind them is good. And if Waymo acquires Uber in 3 years, it's not necessarily a bad thing for Uber.