Yea, Google drove a blind man to Taco Bell in 2012 and still hasn't released a self driving car 4 years later.
Meanwhile, Uber's been in the self driving car business half that time? They already looks more likely to actually have these things on the road, and, they have the incentive, and cash pool to do it.
Another reason people "get this impression" is that Google has a history of interesting projects that never made it to market. Waymo gives me more confidence, but I'm still skeptical.
I don't understand how Uber "looks more likely to actually have these things on the road" when Google's cars have been driving people around Mountain View for years. Please explain.
I also believe Uber will probably go wide first because the risk (people get injured, they possibly go down in flames from legal issues) is worth the reward (they have a chance of surviving as a business by automating human drivers out of the equation).
Google has money falling out of their ears and will do a wide release when it's boringly safe.
I much prefer companies waiting until it is boringly safe but I don't think that's compatible with the money fire Uber has built.
Google has been in the self driving car business since 2009. Uber was FOUNDED in 2009.
Google has a history of starting cool projects, which never make it to market (Wave, Video, Glass, etc.)... That alone, doesn't inspire much confidence that their self driving car project will reach production.
Uber has the incentive, far more than Google, to actually see this through. If they can cut out drivers, their overhead shrinks significantly and their core business grows.
as a google employee, this often makes me sad too, but when it comes to human life, it's a bit more nuanced than that.
engineers don't have the luxury to do many things they could otherwise do on their server side software. You break a server, you fire-drill it, get the resources, roll back the release or so on. You lose money, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, but not human life. You write your post mortem, and put the protections in place, you learn from it.
You could have used those $10m to save hundreds or thousands of lives. It doesn't make any sense to hypothetically spend $10m extra dollars to save a single life.
Meanwhile, Uber's been in the self driving car business half that time? They already looks more likely to actually have these things on the road, and, they have the incentive, and cash pool to do it.
Another reason people "get this impression" is that Google has a history of interesting projects that never made it to market. Waymo gives me more confidence, but I'm still skeptical.