[pinkyand]

They forget that Google also own a high resolution satellite company and they're working on a drone project - all which could be very useful for real time mapping.

About parking, this is less important for a taxi company.

And the incentives for self driving cars are huge , even as regional taxi companies, so connecting the traffic lights into the net(read only) as backup doesn't seem like a big problem.

The real interesting question is: does it really need "generalized intelligence" , or all the examples the article mentioned could be coded decently enough on a case by case basis, to a point where self driving car is much safer than a car ? We don't yet know the answer, but the current safety of Google's car are promising in that regard.