[emilsedgh]

Something that has been baffling me is how Uber is not in panic mode and it's market price not affected by Waymo?

I've always been skeptical [of self driving] but at this point (after having a few rides with Waymo) it appears that the folks at Alphabet have figured it out already and are coming for Uber. Why is not that affecting Uber's price?

[srivmo]

One question I would ask is how fast is Waymo growing? At this stage isn't it too early to comment on the viability? Concerns around safety may take a decade of safe riding/data to come down. Also, when you talk about Uber's stock price - Uber may not only be restricting itself to retail use cases but UberFreight could be a big market as well. In the logistics space too, adoption of self-driving may be slower than in retail is what I suspect.

Also, on an apples-to-apples basis, ~46% of Uber's revenue comes from markets outside the US where self-driving is yet to go through its own motions, regulatory approvals, local dynamics, learning (see how autos drive in subcontinent), etc.

[seveibar]

Waymo is growing incredibly fast (from 2 days ago, nearly 100k trips per week with exponential growth) https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ezysb5/wa...

[xyst]

Waymo is far from a full rollout across the US, let alone the world. That’s why.

Waymo is only testing in 4 cities. Market share is barely scratching the surface. Maybe in a decade, it will be viable replacement.

[hollerith]

How lucky for Uber that driving in the rest of the world is fundamentally different than driving in the 4 Waymo test cities.

[MattGaiser]

Legal frameworks and social acceptance of technology are fundamentally though.

[Ekaros]

And illegal human driven taxis are very different from robot driven unoccupied taxis. First one was existing phenomenon not in big scale that occasionally got handled.

Later one is very visible and scary one.

[hollerith]

Good point.

[duped]

Waymo has zero presence in the vast majority of the United States and nowhere internationally. Meanwhile, "uber" is a verb and noun like Kleenex. And even if in ten years Waymo displaces Uber for transit, Uber will be dominant in food and grocery delivery.

Like if you don't live in the Bay Area or one of the very few places outside it where Waymo has been testing, people have never heard of it.

Basically, Uber is everywhere and Waymo is nowhere. Uber achieved dominance by rapidly scaling and being able to fight regulation with venture capital. Waymo hasn't been able to do that anywhere.

[romeros]

Google is risk-averse. There is no real incentive for its management to be aggressive. Even with the Gemini AI, they only acted after being pushed around by OpenAI.

You need someone ruthless and aggressive at the top, like Travis Kalanick, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Steve Jobs who basically stop at nothing. Folks who act fast and can take big decisions. MBA business types often get caught up in endless meetings, prevaricating over inessential things.

[dylan604]

How many cities is Uber in? How many cities is Waymo in? That's why

[emilsedgh]

If they were in all cities already Uber would be dead. But someone, either Uber or market is not even reacting to this inevitability?

[AlexandrB]

The time horizon on Waymo getting there is quite long. Uber is in every city because they don't have to build and maintain their own fleet. Waymo will have to. That's not only a massive capital cost, but a substantial scaling problem.

[duped]

Because there's two decades of revenue between that happening and today.

It's far more likely that Uber buys Waymo than Waymo replacing Uber.

[wmf]

Uber is going to be a front end to Cruise.

[emilsedgh]

That'd be another reason for market to react? If Uber becomes a front end to Cruise/Waymo, their price should still be massively impacted as those are the ones with the moat and Uber won't be getting nowhere near the same cut from each ride?