The last time I was in SF I used Waymo to get around town and Uber to get to the airport.
The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.
On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.
For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.
One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I’d like to use it anonymously too but it doesn’t feel reasonable to ask for access to a $80k piece of hardware anonymously. I needed to give ID to rent a movie at blockbuster.
I’ve been trying to think of other expensive things you can do anonymously.
Busses aren’t cheap, but have a driver.
You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger. Plenty of staff and other passengers around too.
Waymo is offering a very consistent experience, from the car that is used to the driving behavior.
Taxi services in the past, at least where I grew up, were kind of enforcing a more consistent experience by having requirements about the car and even the color.
But the driving experience was always highly variable and is getting solved by self driving cars.
With uber and Lyft you as the customer gave away some of the experience elements with the promise of cheaper and more abundant transportation.
But the experience has gone so bad, that getting into a Waymo feels so refreshing.
E-bikes are the way to move anonymously. If you're in an environment with any traffic congestion, they stand a good chance of getting you there faster than a car. Another reason to promote bike lanes.
In most of the US, and in urban areas in particular, absolutely E-bikes are king. In California or the bay area in particular, motorcycles are a major contender due to ability to take on highways at speed, but still able to cut through traffic (lane splitting i.e. cutting between cars is 100% legal, but only in California, and neither legal nor illegal in DC), not to mention more power and range generally. The big difference here however is parking. Squeezing a motorcycle between to parallel parked cars is still significantly easier than finding parking for a 4-wheeled vehicle, but with a bicycle one can practically park anywhere that the bicycle can be locked up (depending on common sense decisions of how mad a person would be if you lock to some fence, vs how long you will be parked there)
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I assume you mean this as a moral claim and I can agree in that case. However, it's meaningless of course and kind of infuriating in any other light, because this is the world everyone has been mindlessly begging for and there is no chance that it comes without extremely severe consequences. An automated world like this means even less power for working people than ever before, so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires? Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy? Even if they did "care" it wouldn't matter because they have to compete.
> Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy?
Why do you think most people did in the first place? We (speaking for the majority of consumers) care more about free services than we do having our privacy protected.
The fact that there are a seemingly endless stream of cases of identity fraud and leaks of private data and we still continue to use all the services indicates that we don't value it very much.
Do I care that Google knows I went to Amazon after searching for a particular book title? Nope. Do I care that Google knows I went to the grocery store today? Still no. I would much rather get a great search engine, free maps, GPS, email, documents, storage, photo backups and more.
If I did care about the privacy of these things, I'd pay for it. Or, I'd use a dedicated account on a different service on a different device that can't be connected if I want to do something I don't want others knowing about, like buying naughty lingerie for my partner or something.
Nonsense. You describe a world in which everyone has disposable income to navigate the market, picking and choosing as they please. Capitalism is not that world. Most people are just trying to keep their debt manageable enough to keep a roof over their heads and get to work on time the next day. Get real, guy.
The other day I decided to compare Uber and Waymo. I ordered a Waymo and it was slightly annoyed because it took 5 minutes to do a left turn and almost went into the wrong way.
On the way back I ordered an Uber, one driver cancelled the drive, the other started driving in the other direction, possibly using multiple car sharing apps and finishing another ride.
I ended up cancelling and requesting a Waymo. It may not be perfect but at least it comes when requested
I'm in the North East, so I've never used a Waymo, but I swear the last two or so years of ride share of sucked. I mostly take it to and from the airport, but I have about a 50% likelihood of my Uber drive getting either racist, preachy about religion, or taking a wrong turn that ends up tacking on another ten minutes. Usually those come in sets. I used to really like some pleasant small talk or a silent ride (whatever the driver leaned towards), but it's awful in my city now.
Just a month ago my Lyft driver said that God was telling him that the girl he was seeing was a whore because she said he should seek alcohol counseling.
Like six months ago my Uber driver (out of nowhere) said that the driver next to us on the highway (an Audi driving completely normally) must sell drugs to be able to afford a car that nice. The Audi driver was a black man.
When I'm out of town, that rate feels like it decreases though.
On a societal level I’d say, maybe it’s helpful not to be completely segregated from a certain social class that seems to exist in your town and to be exposed to them, albeit briefly during a cab ride.
I don't think this is a social class issue, it's an issue where society is failing to address widespread anti social behavior and mental illness. We've kind of given up and just accepted racism, anger, belligerence, and all kinds of mental illnesses as inevitable societal land mines that normal people have to tiptoe around. And now that they're unchecked, they're taking over. I can't remember any time in my life where we've had so many people just out there living their lives, in desperate need of help.
I mean this earnestly, and not as some sort of comeback: what would “checking” this behavior look like? What is gone in society now that checked it in the past?
I’m sympathetic to this view but I can’t really make it a coherent theory in my head. When people talk about it on the internet it doesn’t seem to go very far beyond “something changed after Covid” and maybe “social media is to blame” but those two observations don’t make for much of a theory.
I don't know. I'm not a sociologist but it seems like we (at least the USA) have lost the concept of shared behavioral norms, and even where we haven't, public/private shaming is no longer an effective way to enforce those norms.
Maybe I'm longing to go back to an episode of Happy Days that never really existed, but I kind of remember a time where if you were sitting out on your porch and someone walked by and threw trash on the sidewalk in front of you, you could tell them "I saw that! How dare you throw trash down and litter in this neighborhood!" and chances are, they'd show a little remorse and maybe reverse their decision. Now, it's "Fuck off, Karen! Mind your own business! I can do what I want and you can't stop me!" And we just kind of start accepting bad behavior from strangers.
"I don't give a fuck, and you can't tell me what to do" has become this awful national motto.
On a societal level, I think more “normal people” would take public transit if they could guarantee the removal of homeless people and people behaving antisocially
Antisocial probably isn't the right word. It implies minor actions like talking loudly are the problem.
Actions like smoking/vaping, busking, drug use, littering, and peddling are usually already illegal in public transit, but widespread and difficult to enforce.
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
> an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
lol. Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis where bad bad. Uber was cool cool. One "monopoly" got exchanged for another. Now Waymo is cool cool. In 10 years or so Waymo will be bad because they will play loud ads or some shit.
I’m not convinced enshittification of the Waymo experience is inevitable. It’s possible there’s a price point at which they can produce a profit while remaining a premium experience. Uber chose to expand into the mass market, which every lay person already knew was not full of producer surplus. Taxis weren’t famous for shitty service and bad employment practices because they were a monopoly, they were famous for it because it’s a cutthroat, low-margin business.
It seems like Google will tolerate small money pits, but not ones that are scaling up. I'd bet Waymo is at or approaching breakeven. If they stop expanding coverage, then I'd worry about the lines diverging.
Google also still has the scars from buying Motorola and acquiring a huge number of employees. They aren't going to bloat their headcount expanding Waymo.
Oh no, where will I possibly find weird racist xenophobic takes if not during my taxi ride? It's too bad there's not a million social media sites where I could be exposed to them
Ah so sounds like the average cab driver experience. Uber has been one long and consistent regression towards the mean in that sense. I did get a good chuckle out of the taxi I saw recently with the "Do you follow Jesus this closely?" bumper sticker at least.
I almost always have headphones (or passive earmuffs) on so conversation isn't really an issue - but the number of rideshare cars with multiple warning lights on (Tire pressure, etc) is really rather alarming.
Several times I have ordered Uber Black early in the morning and watched as the driver clearly was leaving their house and walking out to their vehicle taking a nice 5+ minutes -- somewhat frustrating. You can't even spend your way out of the problem on Uber.
When Uber came out you often got nicer cars in nicer condition than cabs for less money. Funny that the condition thing has turned on them.
I don't have a strong opinion yet on the long-term viability of Waymo (or any other competitor) because I think we need to see two things:
* what will the cars look like in 3 years? 5?
* will autonomous tech and supporting infra (like cheap automated parking in sparse parts of cities for cars to stay when not in use) make its way into consumer products at a low enough price point, leading to heavy Waymo users turning into vehicle owners instead? This was one of the issues with the scooter/e-bike rental market.
As a non US resident - not having to think about tipping the driver makes me excited and significantly more likely to visit. Tipping culture is just exhausting!
If someone could automate wheeling the food a few dozen metres from a restaurant kitchen to a table next it would be perfect :)
Not for Uber and Lyft. I and many people I know don’t ever tip and there’s no pressure since the tip is shown only after the ride (and rating) is done.
I don’t know about that. Me and everyone I know use Uber as a verb but then always order from Lyft. I used to do it for the political reasons, but at this point it’s mostly just muscle memory. When I do open the Uber app the prices are usually equivalent.
I deliberately default to Lyft because of the "Travis Kalanick days." I don't even know if Uber are a terrible, shitty company anymore, but they once were, and that permanently changed my behavior. I'll probably never buy a Tesla for the same reason.
Uber is global, so I think most visitors and tourists default to using Uber. I wouldn't be surprised if the non-Uber players in every rideshare market attract a totally different demographic - more local, more savvy, maybe daily commuters who tend to "comparison-shop" each trip.
If this is the case then if Waymo is consistently cheaper than Lyft, it would totally suck the air out for Lyft. Whereas, Uber would still see use despite charging a little premium, for the reason I stated in the beginning.
So why don't you catch up with the evolution for a moment? Just like language evolved in Silicon Valley to use uber as a verb during the mid 2010s, it has quickly devolved out of it especially as uber the company has become irrelevant.
I dont know anyone using it as a verb. I hear "im calling/ordering/taking an waymo/uber/lyft/taxi" in 2025.
If you search for burning police cars, you will find that it's a whole photography sub genre. Placed diagonally across the center of an intersection, an old police car is on fire, typically an old crown Vic.
Respect the art form, even as it adapts to new technology.
Wait till people start getting into accidents in these robotaxis. It’s already a complete disaster for Uber. Do you know what it takes to get coverage as a passenger if your Uber driver is an idiot? With current administration going the wild wild west route to complete deregulation, robotaxis will be very rough.
If you are riding in a Lyft and get hurt (and the Lyft is at fault), it's Lyft's medical insurance company that pays out for your medical care. Same as it is for all other auto insurance.
It's a pretty delayed process because unless the Lyft hit a tree there's usually at least two vehicles involved in the crash and the insurance companies have to fight over fault. But they do eventually pay out.
Source: Got into an accident in a Lyft. They even paid my salary for the few days I was off work.
For example, if you get into an accident in NYC, you’re pretty much screwed. Uber will not cover you and you have to rely on “bankrupt” commercial insurance. Which is funny because Uber fees INCLUDE these phantom coverages. Class-action waiting to happen.
Aren’t you PE? Just look up the lawsuits bro. On a serious note, I don’t think Google or Tesla will take on that liability once we get to scale. That basically defeats the purpose of autonomous. Their legal and ops team will do everything to push an alternate business model similar to lease. This is why I really think autonomous has to be at least two orders of magnitude “safer” to be viable at scale (more than 10% on the road).
Comparing to taxi rates and positing a car that's pretty good by human terms, $500 a month for insurance defeats the purpose of autonomous? It doesn't seem like a big issue to me. That's less than a dollar per ride at unimpressive safety levels, so I can't imagine why it would need to be 100x safer.
Amplified meaning if you have 1000x as many cars you have 1000x as many failures?
That's fine. Insurance is built on that model. What's the issue?
Or do you mean something else?
(If amplify means a ton of the cars crash on the same day because they share code, I doubt that being a big effect, because all the cars are in different places working on different data feeds. And even moderately high spikes would be absorbed fine.)
(If amplify means the crash rate of each car goes up when you add more cars to the fleet... why would that happen?)
Why is Uber's price not affected by Waymo is a puzzle to me.
I use Waymo's all the time. There are still some quirks they need to figure out and polish the experience, but it really is happening and it appears that Uber's head is in the sands or I'm missing something here.
Scalability? Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
I agree with your underlying premise that in the (very) long term, all taxis will be automated; I guess the gamble for investors is how long that transition takes, across the globe.
> Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
This. Uber can operate anywhere that has human drivers and cell service. Waymo needs (I think) high-precision maps that are frequently updated, and simple traffic behavior.
Traffic in Lima looks like absolute chaos to an American, with endless honking and lane markers treated as vague suggestions, but there are not constant crashes, because the (mostly professional) drivers know the local conventions and communicate with each other by horn, eye contact, hand signal, etc. Huaraz is full of blind 4-way intersections with no stop signs, so drivers honk as they get close to one, and there is a remarkable lack of fiery death.
Waymo can't work in most places until it either changes human driving, or achieves AGI. Uber works as soon as it can pay local drivers.
So you're saying Waymo can't scale because traffic in Lima is chaotic? That feels like saying cars won't scale because many rural villages don't have roads smooth enough for cars, and that horses can deal with that problem just fine.
Yes and no. If you think Lima is a "rural village," you need to get out more, or at least check Wikipedia. It's a city of 10+ million people that doesn't follow American traffic laws, and there are plenty more like Huaraz (100,000+) where I can catch a human-driven taxi right now.
I'm saying a Jaguar I-Pace with lidar that knows how to follow lines and a high-res map isn't suitable for a lot of the world's roads. And how it will "scale" to what a taxi can handle right now isn't at all obvious.
I've driven or motorcycled in Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines. Too many situations where the roads are just nonsense and the other drivers are insane or homicidal: I can't imagine how a self-driving car could work in the worst traffic without AGI.
Plus drivers will learn the weaknesses of self-driving cars and then abuse those weaknesses.
Taxi drivers know not to stop in certain unsafe locations - good luck for self-driving cars to learn how to read for dangerous situations because of criminals.
I wouldn't touch Uber stock, but the PE ratio is only 15. My guess is the market is expecting them to be able to still grow in the next few years even if they eventually face tough competition.
I think there's also the fact that if self-driving cars take off and price goes down, people will ultimately rely on taxis/delivery more than ever. Maybe there is a place for Uber to be the platform for that still, maybe not.
Waymo and Uber have partnerships in some cities, like Phoenix, where you can only order a Waymo through the Uber app. So they don't view each other only as competitors, though I have no clue what Uber's thinking long-term.
I've heard this argument again but just because you can hail a Waymo through Uber doesn't mean Uber can continue as-is. In a world where Uber is just the app, Uber's margins would be extremely thin and it wouldn't justify the market price it has now.
Also, why would Waymo, in the long term, use Uber for this?
They have the car, the driver, the app/software. They are not gonna share a big chunk of the profit with Uber in long term. The current partnership is probably just a tactical thing for both, not a strategic one.
I always assumed waymo would immediately kill uber, but really the likelihood is that there will be multiple self driving companies as well as human drivers in markets. A big city may need 2000 waymos most of the time, but 5000 waymos on a saturday night or when a big game is on. Google can either build 2.5x as many as they need, or they can keep other operators in the market to make the service more functional during peak times. It is likely that other operators will bring cars to market, and a unified app with different self driving providers will bring better service than any individual provider.
Waymo could develop some type of modular docker-type container that would significantly fill the interior of their vehicles, or maybe even replace the interior of their vehicles. So equipped, a Waymo vehicle could be used to deliver supplies and stock to small businesses throughout the city throughout the week. Think small chains such as convenience stores, they could lower the per-store inventory and refill from remote, cheaper-rent areas, if they had three Waymo deliveries during the work day.
Those vehicles would then be fitted with the human interiors for the high demand periods you state.
There could be a stable long term arrangement between Waymo and Uber. Think of the relationship between Nvidia and OEMs, where Nvidia gets all of the margin and only has to deal with B2B bulk orders that they can redirect at any time, while the OEM has to deal with all the expensive customer support, returns, recalls, and other annoying aspects of retail.
It's not a future where Uber is a viable company though.
Perhaps. Or it may be that Uber sees its long term future as lead gen and management for people/goods transportation, and Waymo sees itself as fulfillment of those.
Uber has tremendous brand recognition and marketing in ways that Google has never been good at. I don’t think it’s the most likely outcome, but I would not be shocked to see Uber take an minority ownership stake in Waymo, use it as the preferred self-driving option, and phase out human drivers in many areas over the next 10 years.
How is Uber subcontracting a ride out to waymo really any different from subcontracting out to a gig worker? It's not an Uber employee or an Uber owned or maintained car in either case.
In the partnership model Waymo charges uber for the ride and Uber charges the customer.
The interesting thing is that uber loses money on every ride. Waymo charges Uber more than Uber charges the customer.
On Uber’s side, though, this is preferable to losing the entire ride. Uber loses much more slowly by controlling the distribution and losing a few dollars per ride than by losing the entire customer base with no revenue from these customers.
Uber eats and other diversifications. Unlike Lyft, which refused to diversify, which I always thought was a strange choice especially once the pandemic hit, Uber not only the dominant player but also diversified enough where it will most likely still be the #1 player, with the second seat now being Waymo. Based on how Waymo scales from city 1 to city n, it is extremely hard for them to do 100 cities at once. And international expansion will be almost impossible. Uber will still continue to dominate those markets.
The thing people miss about Uber is that Waymo doesn't need to scale to 100 cities at once to eviscerate Uber's ride hail business. They need to win the couple dozen largest cities that make up the vast majority of Uber's profits. The rest of the world drives less volume and costs vastly more to service when you account for things like regulatory compliance, internationalization, payments, and support.
My hesitation to use Uber is rarely about price. It's about the miserable experience of having a driver who cancels or never shows up. Prices bumping up or down 20% doesn't move the needle.
> But on an economic level, a subset of blue-collar workers (which numbers in the tens of thousands in San Francisco) would find themselves either regionally displaced or outright vocationally exterminated by a branch of artificial intelligence.
A lot to unpack there, but it does act as a reminder that most people have been highly critical of the rideshare business model, considering these jobs to be profoundly unfair an unsustainable for drivers. So it comes off as disingenuous to hear claims that we're going to lose an important working class profession. No, we're going to lose a profession that, outside of the densest cities, never made economic sense in the 21st century. It's a profession we want to see disappear. Not that it entirely matters considering that consumers are inevitably going to choose the cheaper, safer option regardless of which jobs may be at stake.
After factoring in the depreciation of their assets(the car)? Likely not.
It is a classic case of 'I need to eat today, so I'm taking from my future in order to do so' - this is how the poor get poorer (and the rich get richer).
It is also a profession that doesn't make sense in the densest of cities. There's too much car traffic, and too many square meters allocated to undersupply it.
> Street-side parking in downtown areas is far more wasteful
Be careful: removing parking and making your city centre bicycle and pedestrian friendly does remove cars. But it also removes the people going into town in those cars. I'm in Christchurch (NZ) and the city centre feels car-phobic and so the city centre seems to be dying. Not sure what is cause and effect - it might have been dying first.
> removing parking and making your city centre bicycle and pedestrian friendly does remove cars. But it also removes the people going into town in those cars
With all due respect, someone deterred by a parking fee is similarly deterred by spending in that neighbourhood.
Really? Next time you take an Uber, ask your driver how much they'd like it if they abruptly lost their job. Nobody is forcing people to drive Uber, unemployment is incredibly low, it's not like there aren't other opportunities. Some people actively value being able to set their own hours and not constantly have a boss breathing down their neck.
Doesn't the "Uber Driver App" become the boss breathing down their necks, anyway? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that if the driver doesn't meet performance goals or doesn't take enough passengers, or satisfy a litany of other metrics, they drop them...
The last time I was in SF I used Waymo to get around town and Uber to get to the airport.
The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.
On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.
For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.
One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I’d like to use it anonymously too but it doesn’t feel reasonable to ask for access to a $80k piece of hardware anonymously. I needed to give ID to rent a movie at blockbuster.
I’ve been trying to think of other expensive things you can do anonymously. Busses aren’t cheap, but have a driver. You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger. Plenty of staff and other passengers around too.
> You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check
that is impressive to the point of giving me "living in the future" vibes
> You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger.
I hypothesize that at least one of these is true:
No one has exploited this yet (it only takes one incident).
It is checked, you just don't know about it. Facial ID is pretty rad now.
> It is checked, you just don't know about it. Facial ID is pretty rad now.
It isn’t. I’ve flown on someone else’s ticket and I’ve given a ticket away before.
You hit an important point here.
Waymo is offering a very consistent experience, from the car that is used to the driving behavior.
Taxi services in the past, at least where I grew up, were kind of enforcing a more consistent experience by having requirements about the car and even the color.
But the driving experience was always highly variable and is getting solved by self driving cars.
With uber and Lyft you as the customer gave away some of the experience elements with the promise of cheaper and more abundant transportation.
But the experience has gone so bad, that getting into a Waymo feels so refreshing.
The problem is inherent in any business that scales revenue by volume.
For many goods (short term rental spaces, rideshares), there's a finite supply of quality at a given price point.
Both AirBnb and Uber/Lyft tried to over-scale their supply, to drive revenue, and quality suffered.
Now they're fishing for the Amazon-ian point where they maximize revenue without making people so unhappy they stop using the service.
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
That it requires a Google account is worth taking up with the TCP. That's a tie-in sale.
The TCP?
The part of the California Public Utilities Commission that regulates private buses and ride-sharing.[1]
[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/tcpinfo/
Is it possible to use Uber anonymously?
They’re probably comparing to taxis, where you can pay in cash.
E-bikes are the way to move anonymously. If you're in an environment with any traffic congestion, they stand a good chance of getting you there faster than a car. Another reason to promote bike lanes.
In most of the US, and in urban areas in particular, absolutely E-bikes are king. In California or the bay area in particular, motorcycles are a major contender due to ability to take on highways at speed, but still able to cut through traffic (lane splitting i.e. cutting between cars is 100% legal, but only in California, and neither legal nor illegal in DC), not to mention more power and range generally. The big difference here however is parking. Squeezing a motorcycle between to parallel parked cars is still significantly easier than finding parking for a 4-wheeled vehicle, but with a bicycle one can practically park anywhere that the bicycle can be locked up (depending on common sense decisions of how mad a person would be if you lock to some fence, vs how long you will be parked there)
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I assume you mean this as a moral claim and I can agree in that case. However, it's meaningless of course and kind of infuriating in any other light, because this is the world everyone has been mindlessly begging for and there is no chance that it comes without extremely severe consequences. An automated world like this means even less power for working people than ever before, so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires? Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy? Even if they did "care" it wouldn't matter because they have to compete.
> so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires?
The same way this sort of thing has always been accomplished: Government regulation.
Vote, write reps, donate to the ACLU and EFF, socialize.
> Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy?
Why do you think most people did in the first place? We (speaking for the majority of consumers) care more about free services than we do having our privacy protected.
The fact that there are a seemingly endless stream of cases of identity fraud and leaks of private data and we still continue to use all the services indicates that we don't value it very much.
Do I care that Google knows I went to Amazon after searching for a particular book title? Nope. Do I care that Google knows I went to the grocery store today? Still no. I would much rather get a great search engine, free maps, GPS, email, documents, storage, photo backups and more.
If I did care about the privacy of these things, I'd pay for it. Or, I'd use a dedicated account on a different service on a different device that can't be connected if I want to do something I don't want others knowing about, like buying naughty lingerie for my partner or something.
Nonsense. You describe a world in which everyone has disposable income to navigate the market, picking and choosing as they please. Capitalism is not that world. Most people are just trying to keep their debt manageable enough to keep a roof over their heads and get to work on time the next day. Get real, guy.
No, I'm describing this world. Nothing you said refutes the point that people prefer free services over the presumed loss of privacy.
The other day I decided to compare Uber and Waymo. I ordered a Waymo and it was slightly annoyed because it took 5 minutes to do a left turn and almost went into the wrong way.
On the way back I ordered an Uber, one driver cancelled the drive, the other started driving in the other direction, possibly using multiple car sharing apps and finishing another ride.
I ended up cancelling and requesting a Waymo. It may not be perfect but at least it comes when requested
I'm in the North East, so I've never used a Waymo, but I swear the last two or so years of ride share of sucked. I mostly take it to and from the airport, but I have about a 50% likelihood of my Uber drive getting either racist, preachy about religion, or taking a wrong turn that ends up tacking on another ten minutes. Usually those come in sets. I used to really like some pleasant small talk or a silent ride (whatever the driver leaned towards), but it's awful in my city now.
Just a month ago my Lyft driver said that God was telling him that the girl he was seeing was a whore because she said he should seek alcohol counseling.
Like six months ago my Uber driver (out of nowhere) said that the driver next to us on the highway (an Audi driving completely normally) must sell drugs to be able to afford a car that nice. The Audi driver was a black man.
When I'm out of town, that rate feels like it decreases though.
That all said, I'd take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
> I’d take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
On a personal level I fully understand that.
On a societal level I’d say, maybe it’s helpful not to be completely segregated from a certain social class that seems to exist in your town and to be exposed to them, albeit briefly during a cab ride.
I don't think this is a social class issue, it's an issue where society is failing to address widespread anti social behavior and mental illness. We've kind of given up and just accepted racism, anger, belligerence, and all kinds of mental illnesses as inevitable societal land mines that normal people have to tiptoe around. And now that they're unchecked, they're taking over. I can't remember any time in my life where we've had so many people just out there living their lives, in desperate need of help.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/
I mean this earnestly, and not as some sort of comeback: what would “checking” this behavior look like? What is gone in society now that checked it in the past?
I’m sympathetic to this view but I can’t really make it a coherent theory in my head. When people talk about it on the internet it doesn’t seem to go very far beyond “something changed after Covid” and maybe “social media is to blame” but those two observations don’t make for much of a theory.
I don't know. I'm not a sociologist but it seems like we (at least the USA) have lost the concept of shared behavioral norms, and even where we haven't, public/private shaming is no longer an effective way to enforce those norms.
Maybe I'm longing to go back to an episode of Happy Days that never really existed, but I kind of remember a time where if you were sitting out on your porch and someone walked by and threw trash on the sidewalk in front of you, you could tell them "I saw that! How dare you throw trash down and litter in this neighborhood!" and chances are, they'd show a little remorse and maybe reverse their decision. Now, it's "Fuck off, Karen! Mind your own business! I can do what I want and you can't stop me!" And we just kind of start accepting bad behavior from strangers.
"I don't give a fuck, and you can't tell me what to do" has become this awful national motto.
On a societal level, I think more “normal people” would take public transit if they could guarantee the removal of homeless people and people behaving antisocially
That would require everyone having a stable job. Something to think about.
No, it would require removing homeless or antisocial people from public transportation.
How do you suggest authorities test people for homelessness on public transportation?
Are you proposing any specific laws to manage antisocial behavior?
In the end, I'm certain that the better idea is to simply give people jobs.
Antisocial probably isn't the right word. It implies minor actions like talking loudly are the problem.
Actions like smoking/vaping, busking, drug use, littering, and peddling are usually already illegal in public transit, but widespread and difficult to enforce.
on what basis would you deny public service to the homeless and antisocial people?
Creating uniformly applied rules like no laying horizontally across seats or smoking, and aggressively enforcing them
There is always a set of rules, terms and conditions. Like you'll be denied if you are dirty, heavily drunk, etc.
So do you need to scan your rental agreement or property deed to board the bus, or will the accept a utility bill...?
And function social welfare with healthcare, mental health care, housing and education provision.
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
> an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
lol. Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis where bad bad. Uber was cool cool. One "monopoly" got exchanged for another. Now Waymo is cool cool. In 10 years or so Waymo will be bad because they will play loud ads or some shit.
> Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis were bad bad. Uber was cool cool
Yes. My Brown-educated perpetually suit-wearing black roommate couldn’t get a hail on 5th Avenue and the credit-card machines never worked.
Yep, Waymo turning into a terrible exploitative experience 5-10 years after locking up the market will be the least surprising business story ever.
I’m not convinced enshittification of the Waymo experience is inevitable. It’s possible there’s a price point at which they can produce a profit while remaining a premium experience. Uber chose to expand into the mass market, which every lay person already knew was not full of producer surplus. Taxis weren’t famous for shitty service and bad employment practices because they were a monopoly, they were famous for it because it’s a cutthroat, low-margin business.
It seems like Google will tolerate small money pits, but not ones that are scaling up. I'd bet Waymo is at or approaching breakeven. If they stop expanding coverage, then I'd worry about the lines diverging.
Google also still has the scars from buying Motorola and acquiring a huge number of employees. They aren't going to bloat their headcount expanding Waymo.
Oh no, where will I possibly find weird racist xenophobic takes if not during my taxi ride? It's too bad there's not a million social media sites where I could be exposed to them
Ah so sounds like the average cab driver experience. Uber has been one long and consistent regression towards the mean in that sense. I did get a good chuckle out of the taxi I saw recently with the "Do you follow Jesus this closely?" bumper sticker at least.
I almost always have headphones (or passive earmuffs) on so conversation isn't really an issue - but the number of rideshare cars with multiple warning lights on (Tire pressure, etc) is really rather alarming.
Several times I have ordered Uber Black early in the morning and watched as the driver clearly was leaving their house and walking out to their vehicle taking a nice 5+ minutes -- somewhat frustrating. You can't even spend your way out of the problem on Uber.
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When Uber came out you often got nicer cars in nicer condition than cabs for less money. Funny that the condition thing has turned on them.
I don't have a strong opinion yet on the long-term viability of Waymo (or any other competitor) because I think we need to see two things:
* what will the cars look like in 3 years? 5?
* will autonomous tech and supporting infra (like cheap automated parking in sparse parts of cities for cars to stay when not in use) make its way into consumer products at a low enough price point, leading to heavy Waymo users turning into vehicle owners instead? This was one of the issues with the scooter/e-bike rental market.
As a non US resident - not having to think about tipping the driver makes me excited and significantly more likely to visit. Tipping culture is just exhausting!
If someone could automate wheeling the food a few dozen metres from a restaurant kitchen to a table next it would be perfect :)
You don't need to tip Uber/Lyft drivers. It's always been optional.
Aren't most tips are optional anyway but we're all pressured to give one?
Not for Uber and Lyft. I and many people I know don’t ever tip and there’s no pressure since the tip is shown only after the ride (and rating) is done.
Waymo is the first tech product/service I’ve used in the last decade that actually blew my mind.
The last time was when I could take photos on my phone that were as good enough as lugging around a Dslr.
There have been good products and services in between don’t get me wrong. But none of them instantly blew me away like those.
There is still no phone on which photos are as good as on a DSLR. I think people have just forgotten how good DSLR photos can be.
* as good enough is what I said.
Lyft seems to have suffered more (proportionately) from Waymo than Uber in SF.
I bet that’s a reflection of a large “anyone-but-Uber” contingent stemming from the Travis Kalanick days.
Because Lyft is an afterthought. Uber is a verb
I don’t know about that. Me and everyone I know use Uber as a verb but then always order from Lyft. I used to do it for the political reasons, but at this point it’s mostly just muscle memory. When I do open the Uber app the prices are usually equivalent.
I deliberately default to Lyft because of the "Travis Kalanick days." I don't even know if Uber are a terrible, shitty company anymore, but they once were, and that permanently changed my behavior. I'll probably never buy a Tesla for the same reason.
If you want proof that they’re still a shitty company, search up uber showergate
Uber is global, so I think most visitors and tourists default to using Uber. I wouldn't be surprised if the non-Uber players in every rideshare market attract a totally different demographic - more local, more savvy, maybe daily commuters who tend to "comparison-shop" each trip.
If this is the case then if Waymo is consistently cheaper than Lyft, it would totally suck the air out for Lyft. Whereas, Uber would still see use despite charging a little premium, for the reason I stated in the beginning.
Uber is a prefixal adjective or adverb
Languages evolve. People have been using it as a verb a lot, so it's become a verb.
So why don't you catch up with the evolution for a moment? Just like language evolved in Silicon Valley to use uber as a verb during the mid 2010s, it has quickly devolved out of it especially as uber the company has become irrelevant.
I dont know anyone using it as a verb. I hear "im calling/ordering/taking an waymo/uber/lyft/taxi" in 2025.
Nonsense. Here, you should be able to convince yourself pretty easily browsing Google Trends.
Even simpler: just Google "uber home" -uberhome and you'll pretty recent examples of people writing about ubering home.
I was in SF yesterday and wanted to try out a Waymo, but apparently they're not operating right now.
Wow, must be because of the protests. It’s so bad that people take out their aggression for the president on Waymo of all things.
I don't think the people setting cars on fire have any opinion whatsover about the president.
If you search for burning police cars, you will find that it's a whole photography sub genre. Placed diagonally across the center of an intersection, an old police car is on fire, typically an old crown Vic.
Respect the art form, even as it adapts to new technology.
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I wanted to try out Waymo, but their app won't run on my phone which is limited to iOS 15.
Related:
Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44258139
Wait till people start getting into accidents in these robotaxis. It’s already a complete disaster for Uber. Do you know what it takes to get coverage as a passenger if your Uber driver is an idiot? With current administration going the wild wild west route to complete deregulation, robotaxis will be very rough.
> Do you know what it takes to get coverage as a passenger if your Uber driver is an idiot?
Coverage as a passenger? For what?
If you are riding in a Lyft and get hurt (and the Lyft is at fault), it's Lyft's medical insurance company that pays out for your medical care. Same as it is for all other auto insurance.
It's a pretty delayed process because unless the Lyft hit a tree there's usually at least two vehicles involved in the crash and the insurance companies have to fight over fault. But they do eventually pay out.
Source: Got into an accident in a Lyft. They even paid my salary for the few days I was off work.
That’s what people assume. It’s not.
Could you explain and provide more details?
For example, if you get into an accident in NYC, you’re pretty much screwed. Uber will not cover you and you have to rely on “bankrupt” commercial insurance. Which is funny because Uber fees INCLUDE these phantom coverages. Class-action waiting to happen.
> if you get into an accident in NYC, you’re pretty much screwed. Uber will not cover you and you have to rely on “bankrupt” commercial insurance
What is your source on TLC commercial insurance not paying out for medical expenses sustained in an accident?
And going back to Waymo, wouldn’t having one of the world’s wealthiest companies as the beneficial counterparty solve the problem you’re raising?
Aren’t you PE? Just look up the lawsuits bro. On a serious note, I don’t think Google or Tesla will take on that liability once we get to scale. That basically defeats the purpose of autonomous. Their legal and ops team will do everything to push an alternate business model similar to lease. This is why I really think autonomous has to be at least two orders of magnitude “safer” to be viable at scale (more than 10% on the road).
Comparing to taxi rates and positing a car that's pretty good by human terms, $500 a month for insurance defeats the purpose of autonomous? It doesn't seem like a big issue to me. That's less than a dollar per ride at unimpressive safety levels, so I can't imagine why it would need to be 100x safer.
Because you’re going to amplify “errors” and “failures” if you have a system of cars running same or similar autonomous models.
Amplified meaning if you have 1000x as many cars you have 1000x as many failures?
That's fine. Insurance is built on that model. What's the issue?
Or do you mean something else?
(If amplify means a ton of the cars crash on the same day because they share code, I doubt that being a big effect, because all the cars are in different places working on different data feeds. And even moderately high spikes would be absorbed fine.)
(If amplify means the crash rate of each car goes up when you add more cars to the fleet... why would that happen?)
> Aren’t you PE?
No. VC.
> Just look up the lawsuits bro
Can you name one? I’ve been in a single taxi accident. Liability was never even questionably mine.
> don’t think Google or Tesla will take on that liability once we get to scale
Based on what? Centralising liability tends to facilitate its transfer.
> accidents
Why do you think Waymo works differently from all other cases of physical injury liability?
Why is Uber's price not affected by Waymo is a puzzle to me.
I use Waymo's all the time. There are still some quirks they need to figure out and polish the experience, but it really is happening and it appears that Uber's head is in the sands or I'm missing something here.
Scalability? Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
I agree with your underlying premise that in the (very) long term, all taxis will be automated; I guess the gamble for investors is how long that transition takes, across the globe.
> Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
This. Uber can operate anywhere that has human drivers and cell service. Waymo needs (I think) high-precision maps that are frequently updated, and simple traffic behavior.
Traffic in Lima looks like absolute chaos to an American, with endless honking and lane markers treated as vague suggestions, but there are not constant crashes, because the (mostly professional) drivers know the local conventions and communicate with each other by horn, eye contact, hand signal, etc. Huaraz is full of blind 4-way intersections with no stop signs, so drivers honk as they get close to one, and there is a remarkable lack of fiery death.
Waymo can't work in most places until it either changes human driving, or achieves AGI. Uber works as soon as it can pay local drivers.
So you're saying Waymo can't scale because traffic in Lima is chaotic? That feels like saying cars won't scale because many rural villages don't have roads smooth enough for cars, and that horses can deal with that problem just fine.
Yes and no. If you think Lima is a "rural village," you need to get out more, or at least check Wikipedia. It's a city of 10+ million people that doesn't follow American traffic laws, and there are plenty more like Huaraz (100,000+) where I can catch a human-driven taxi right now.
I'm saying a Jaguar I-Pace with lidar that knows how to follow lines and a high-res map isn't suitable for a lot of the world's roads. And how it will "scale" to what a taxi can handle right now isn't at all obvious.
I've driven or motorcycled in Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines. Too many situations where the roads are just nonsense and the other drivers are insane or homicidal: I can't imagine how a self-driving car could work in the worst traffic without AGI.
Plus drivers will learn the weaknesses of self-driving cars and then abuse those weaknesses.
Taxi drivers know not to stop in certain unsafe locations - good luck for self-driving cars to learn how to read for dangerous situations because of criminals.
I wouldn't touch Uber stock, but the PE ratio is only 15. My guess is the market is expecting them to be able to still grow in the next few years even if they eventually face tough competition.
I think there's also the fact that if self-driving cars take off and price goes down, people will ultimately rely on taxis/delivery more than ever. Maybe there is a place for Uber to be the platform for that still, maybe not.
Uber also has a delivery business. Uber Eats and Uber direct.
Waymo and Uber have partnerships in some cities, like Phoenix, where you can only order a Waymo through the Uber app. So they don't view each other only as competitors, though I have no clue what Uber's thinking long-term.
I've heard this argument again but just because you can hail a Waymo through Uber doesn't mean Uber can continue as-is. In a world where Uber is just the app, Uber's margins would be extremely thin and it wouldn't justify the market price it has now.
Also, why would Waymo, in the long term, use Uber for this?
They have the car, the driver, the app/software. They are not gonna share a big chunk of the profit with Uber in long term. The current partnership is probably just a tactical thing for both, not a strategic one.
I always assumed waymo would immediately kill uber, but really the likelihood is that there will be multiple self driving companies as well as human drivers in markets. A big city may need 2000 waymos most of the time, but 5000 waymos on a saturday night or when a big game is on. Google can either build 2.5x as many as they need, or they can keep other operators in the market to make the service more functional during peak times. It is likely that other operators will bring cars to market, and a unified app with different self driving providers will bring better service than any individual provider.
Waymo could develop some type of modular docker-type container that would significantly fill the interior of their vehicles, or maybe even replace the interior of their vehicles. So equipped, a Waymo vehicle could be used to deliver supplies and stock to small businesses throughout the city throughout the week. Think small chains such as convenience stores, they could lower the per-store inventory and refill from remote, cheaper-rent areas, if they had three Waymo deliveries during the work day.
Those vehicles would then be fitted with the human interiors for the high demand periods you state.
If the businesses are reliant on the special deliveries, then you can't re-purpose them as you need more cars for people.
The idea would be that the deliveries happen during the day working hours, yet the people moving happens during the night hours. As implied by GP.
There could be a stable long term arrangement between Waymo and Uber. Think of the relationship between Nvidia and OEMs, where Nvidia gets all of the margin and only has to deal with B2B bulk orders that they can redirect at any time, while the OEM has to deal with all the expensive customer support, returns, recalls, and other annoying aspects of retail.
It's not a future where Uber is a viable company though.
Perhaps. Or it may be that Uber sees its long term future as lead gen and management for people/goods transportation, and Waymo sees itself as fulfillment of those.
Uber has tremendous brand recognition and marketing in ways that Google has never been good at. I don’t think it’s the most likely outcome, but I would not be shocked to see Uber take an minority ownership stake in Waymo, use it as the preferred self-driving option, and phase out human drivers in many areas over the next 10 years.
How is Uber subcontracting a ride out to waymo really any different from subcontracting out to a gig worker? It's not an Uber employee or an Uber owned or maintained car in either case.
The app isn't the important part of that partnership, it's that they're managing and operating the fleets.
Maybe winning a finders fee is more profitable, Uber isn't high margin to begin with.
Small correction: in Phoenix you can also use the Waymo One app directly. In both Austin and Atlanta though, we are only available via Uber.
In the partnership model Waymo charges uber for the ride and Uber charges the customer.
The interesting thing is that uber loses money on every ride. Waymo charges Uber more than Uber charges the customer.
On Uber’s side, though, this is preferable to losing the entire ride. Uber loses much more slowly by controlling the distribution and losing a few dollars per ride than by losing the entire customer base with no revenue from these customers.
This is true. Then again Google used to power Yahoo!'s search and then ended up replacing Yahoo! as the default web destination
Uber eats and other diversifications. Unlike Lyft, which refused to diversify, which I always thought was a strange choice especially once the pandemic hit, Uber not only the dominant player but also diversified enough where it will most likely still be the #1 player, with the second seat now being Waymo. Based on how Waymo scales from city 1 to city n, it is extremely hard for them to do 100 cities at once. And international expansion will be almost impossible. Uber will still continue to dominate those markets.
The thing people miss about Uber is that Waymo doesn't need to scale to 100 cities at once to eviscerate Uber's ride hail business. They need to win the couple dozen largest cities that make up the vast majority of Uber's profits. The rest of the world drives less volume and costs vastly more to service when you account for things like regulatory compliance, internationalization, payments, and support.
Lyft is slightly diversified with bike rental in a few cities, although that's only a small fraction of their revenue.
My hesitation to use Uber is rarely about price. It's about the miserable experience of having a driver who cancels or never shows up. Prices bumping up or down 20% doesn't move the needle.
> But on an economic level, a subset of blue-collar workers (which numbers in the tens of thousands in San Francisco) would find themselves either regionally displaced or outright vocationally exterminated by a branch of artificial intelligence.
A lot to unpack there, but it does act as a reminder that most people have been highly critical of the rideshare business model, considering these jobs to be profoundly unfair an unsustainable for drivers. So it comes off as disingenuous to hear claims that we're going to lose an important working class profession. No, we're going to lose a profession that, outside of the densest cities, never made economic sense in the 21st century. It's a profession we want to see disappear. Not that it entirely matters considering that consumers are inevitably going to choose the cheaper, safer option regardless of which jobs may be at stake.
The crazy thing about ridesharing and similar, is that the workers are providing the capital (the cars), but the company is making the profits!
Drivers make profits as well, no?
After factoring in the depreciation of their assets(the car)? Likely not.
It is a classic case of 'I need to eat today, so I'm taking from my future in order to do so' - this is how the poor get poorer (and the rich get richer).
It is also a profession that doesn't make sense in the densest of cities. There's too much car traffic, and too many square meters allocated to undersupply it.
> a profession that doesn't make sense in the densest of cities. There's too much car traffic, and too many square meters allocated to undersupply it
Street-side parking in downtown areas is far more wasteful than ridesharing cars.
> Street-side parking in downtown areas is far more wasteful
Be careful: removing parking and making your city centre bicycle and pedestrian friendly does remove cars. But it also removes the people going into town in those cars. I'm in Christchurch (NZ) and the city centre feels car-phobic and so the city centre seems to be dying. Not sure what is cause and effect - it might have been dying first.
> removing parking and making your city centre bicycle and pedestrian friendly does remove cars. But it also removes the people going into town in those cars
With all due respect, someone deterred by a parking fee is similarly deterred by spending in that neighbourhood.
They should take the train. Driving into a city center is always a bad idea unless you have a very specific reason, or it's a very small city.
>It's a profession we want to see disappear
Really? Next time you take an Uber, ask your driver how much they'd like it if they abruptly lost their job. Nobody is forcing people to drive Uber, unemployment is incredibly low, it's not like there aren't other opportunities. Some people actively value being able to set their own hours and not constantly have a boss breathing down their neck.
Doesn't the "Uber Driver App" become the boss breathing down their necks, anyway? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that if the driver doesn't meet performance goals or doesn't take enough passengers, or satisfy a litany of other metrics, they drop them...
Not all commercial arrangements are legal. Surely you can think of the reasons.