Two weeks ago, Kalanick announced that Uber will launch a fleet of unmanned vehicles, publicly claiming that it would like to start a positive confrontation with companies such as Google. Yesterday, due to the increasingly overlapping of Uber and Google in the automotive business, in order to avoid unnecessary interference, Google’s chief legal counsel, David Drummond, withdrew from Uber’s board of directors. Today, Google will directly extend its reach to Uber's old bank and will launch a free ride in San Francisco.
According to the US "Wall Street Journal" report, Google embedded the ride service in its crowdsourced maps and navigation application Waze. On Waze, a large number of owners every day provide the platform with real-time congestion information on various roads. Car owners can determine the best route according to Waze. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand integrating rider services into Waze, which has a large number of owners. So far, the Waze app has had 700,000 users in the Gulf of California area. Once Google Shake is officially launched, these users can register as owners or passengers. The important point is that Google does not review the owner’s identity and vehicle.
As early as May of this year, Waze had conducted a trial ride at Google headquarters in Mountain View, focusing on the company’s more than 20,000 employees and other large companies nearby. At that time, passengers were charged 34 cents per kilometer. Uber and Lyft adopt the market dynamic pricing model. When the demand exceeds the peak supply period, it will automatically increase the cost, causing some controversy. In addition, Lyft has recently closed its own rider business due to fewer carpooling users.
Judging from the recent series of moves, Google and Uber have gradually shifted from strategic partnerships to front-facing competitors, and the honeymoon period is coming to an end. Previously, Uber has been using Google's maps, and Google has also integrated Uber's car service in map applications. Recently, Uber has announced the independent development of its own digital map. In the field of self-driving cars, Uber also began to benchmark Google, which will soon test a self-driving car-based taxi service in Pittsburgh, USA, and lead Google in commercial testing of unmanned vehicles.
According to external analysis, Google’s rollout business is not necessarily an exercise in the already saturated taxi market. It may be due to these two considerations: First, it obtains users’ travel data. Second, it provides a commercial testing and training environment for self-driving cars by launching a taxi business. According to recent reports from foreign media, Google is planning to use its own self-driving cars in taxis. This move also seems to support the "commercial testing theory" to some extent.