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Transportation Google Technology

Google's Waze Jumps Into the Ride-Sharing Business 90

Posted by Soulskill from the now-with-100%-less-profit dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Waze, the online mapping company owned by Google, is testing a ride-sharing service in Israel called RideWith. The service will allow commuters to pay drivers for rides to and from work. This is a hard limit — drivers can give no more than two rides per day. If the restriction remains after the initial test, it could be a simple way to avoid pseudo-professional drivers, and all the taxi-related legal problems that go with them (see: Uber). "RideWith calculates a cost based on the anticipated fuel consumption and 'depreciation' based on mileage, and the driver is free to accept or decline the ride accordingly." One can't help but speculate about future involvement with Google's autonomous car project.
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Google's Waze Jumps Into the Ride-Sharing Business More

Google's Waze Jumps Into the Ride-Sharing Business

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  • If the restriction remains after the initial test, it could be a simple way to avoid pseudo-professional drivers, and all the taxi-related legal problems

    You don't know much about taxi unions or city regulatory agencies, do you?

    In no way does it avoid anything except making 100% a driver cannot make a living through this. So it's a lose-lose.

    • Will they go after the car pools next? It seems this is just a better car pool.

      • No money in car pools (Score:4, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday July 06, 2015 @12:52PM (#50055903)

        Will they go after the car pools next?

        No because those are free. It's the presence of money in any form or amount that triggers the primal instinct by the state (and taxi unions) to control or kill.

        What would be nice is a kind of Tinder for car sharing, where you could put in a starting point, and ending point - people could read your profile and see a rough distance from their own starting and ending points, and swipe right if you seemed like someone they would want to ride with...

        There would be no money in that (for the drivers anyway) so the taxis/state would lay off.

        • I have heard of many paid car pools. Car pools generally pool maintenance and gas costs as well, or did you think the driver was donating that?

          • Sure but those are all individual efforts, not a group of car pools where the organizing group itself takes a cut or facilitates the transfer.

        • Papers please.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )
          No, the presence of profit is what triggers reaction, and quite rightly so. Ride sharing is not meant to generate profit for anyone, just to cover costs. That's it.

    • In no way does it avoid anything except making 100% [sure] a driver cannot make a living through this.

      That's kind of the point. By the way, you can't make a living wage [businessinsider.com] driving full-time for Uber either. Waze is just making sure no one even tries to.

      • By the way, you can't make a living wage driving full-time for Uber either

        Hey guess what THAT DOESN'T MATTER.

        The last Uber driver I had, was also a comedian/writer (Los Angeles). He didn't need a living wage, he wanted a part time job with a ton of flexibility to supplement income.

        There are a LOT of people like this (including, perhaps you've heard of them, TEENAGERS). The next time someone says "that doesn't make a living wage" the correct response is to punch them in the mouth.

        P.S. on a side note those

        • Re:Living Wage is mandated for, and desired by idi (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday July 06, 2015 @01:03PM (#50056023)

          By the way, you can't make a living wage driving full-time for Uber either

          Hey guess what THAT DOESN'T MATTER.

          The last Uber driver I had, was also a comedian/writer (Los Angeles). He didn't need a living wage, he wanted a part time job with a ton of flexibility to supplement income.

          There are a LOT of people like this (including, perhaps you've heard of them, TEENAGERS).

          Considering the safety record of teenagers, they are absolutely the last ones that should be driving a gypsy cab like Uber.

          And as for the part time job thing, well, there are plenty of people that sell a little pot on the side or do some escort work on weekends, but those are still illegal, just as operating as an unlicensed taxi is.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          There are a LOT of people like this (including, perhaps you've heard of them, TEENAGERS).

          Yeah! Lets put drivers half way through their graduated licensing programs on the streets, driving parts of town they don't know, with random strangers as passengers. Great idea.

          I wonder what commercial passenger insurance costs for a teenager who hasn't even got their full license yet. Probably more than they'll ever make driving for uber.

          • driving parts of town they don't know, with random strangers as passengers. Great idea.

            Actually it turns out is a pretty great idea, it's called Uber (and Lyft).

            It's almost universally loved by customers, because in many cities TAXI DRIVERS don't know where anything is either. In the last several taxis I've been in even giving a well-known place name (like Long Beach in Los Angeles) was ignored as they typed in the exact address into a GPS...

            Since an Uber driver will find a way to where I am going the same

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by vux984 ( 928602 )

              Actually it turns out is a pretty great idea, it's called Uber (and Lyft).

              I was commenting specifically on having it operated by teenagers. Do try to keep up.

              Driver inexperience + pressure of a random stranger + parts of town they don't know == bad idea.

              It has nothing to do with knowing the location of the destination address or the best route there. It has everything to do with not knowing the roads. Not being an expert at merging, not being expert at parallel parking, not being expert at sizing up complex, unfamiliar intersections.

              Saying, "no problem they have a GPS" is like sa

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dave420 ( 699308 )
              I think your location's inability to get a taxi service running speaks more about where you are from than the awesomeness that is Uber. Where I live taxis are clean, cheap, the drivers know where you want to go, and have great training. Uber was hounded out of town because they were screwing up the current, working system, to the detriment of customers and drivers alike.

        • living wage

          Is a flat out lie. Yeah it sound great and triggers emotional responses (fear, anger) of simpleminded people who can't see beyond "Single Mom with three kids" working in a Min Wage job, because they are completely unqualified for any other kind of job. We aren't allowed to talk about why she has three kids from four fathers (well, we know two of the kids fathers, the third is in dispute until Paternity test is done). The point being, "living wage" is a simpleton view of the world, and is wholly unworkable a

          • When god covers all your expenses and then some.

        • The last Uber driver I had, was also a comedian/writer (Los Angeles). He didn't need a living wage, he wanted a part time job with a ton of flexibility to supplement income.

          Makes perfect sense to me. There are lots of people whose lifestyles don't permit a regular job, but could use a flexible income supplement.

          The next time someone says "that doesn't make a living wage" the correct response is to punch them in the mouth.

          That's a rather violent, not to mention criminal, response. I think not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        By the way, you can't make a living wage [businessinsider.com] driving full-time for Uber either

        From the article:

        We spoke with more than a dozen Uber drivers

        As an assumption, if they would have talked to 25 people the would have said "more than two dozen", so I can assume they didn't talk to 100 or 1000 people. Surveying 12-23 drivers out of 15,000 doesn't seem to be a sufficient sample size to say definitively that they calculated a statistically significant median income.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MacTO ( 1161105 )

      It will give the taxi companies less of a leg to stand on, which may be sufficient. As for city regulators, I would imagine that it depends upon the city. Some cities would be enthusiastic to get cars off of the roads since this incurs an expense (either through increased maintainence or building more capacity).

      The tricky part is will this type of ride sharing provide enough service to be viable. It may work out for people commuting to work during peak hours. It probably won't work out for people who ne

      • Taxi companies are turning (have turned) into the same type of company as the MPAA. They refuse to accept their business model is dieing and instead tries to legislate anyone that disrupts their business model out of business.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )
          Speak for your own taxi services. In many parts of the world the taxi services are as close to perfect as one could imagine.

    • You don't know much about taxi unions or city regulatory agencies, do you?

      And neither do I. Even after reading you comment.

      • And neither do I. Even after reading you comment.

        Taxis pay a lot of money for their monopolies. City regulators make a lot of money selling taxi licenses (directly and indirectly). Neither will welcome a new competitor who doesn't grease the right palms.

        Do you really need a map to guess what happens next?

        • I don't call 350EUR (the registering fee of the taxi license, YMMV) "a lot of money".
          And by the "indirect" ways of making money, are you implying everyone in the taxi business is corrupt, at least on the regulators' side?

          Besides, since the rides compensated are clearly restricted and targeted to the commute traffic, and nobody I know commutes with taxis (do you know such people?), the true victims of this new idea are the suburban busslines that drive around almost empty, because the law mandates the munici

          • since the rides compensated are clearly restricted and targeted to the commute traffic, and nobody I know commutes with taxis (do you know such people?),

            No, but I see the fleets of black hire cars rolling around. Usually driving like asshats.

          • I don't call 350EUR (the registering fee of the taxi license, YMMV) "a lot of money".

            Yet 6 US dollars a month was considered an insurmountable problem for college students going to Georgetown University.

    • Amen. Anything that cuts into their monopoly is the enemy, period.

    • I don't think you just quite go the idea. It looks like this is supposed to be a ride sharing service, not a "ride sharing service". Ride sharing service, as in "I want to go from A to B, so find me an additional passenger to go from A to B, to save some cost". Properly used, this reduces or removes your cost of driving to work. It isn't supposed to allow you to make a limit.

      And properly done, I think it should be totally legal for example in the UK and in Germany. Actually, In Germany that kind of thing

  • >> This is a hard limit — drivers can give no more than two rides per day.

    That's not carpooling in the sense that many carpoolers give 3+ people a ride to somewhere.

  • Time for Uber business sharks to step aside (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Time for Uber business sharks to step aside. But thanks, Uber, for all the unethical business practices that created the legal precedent for this business model. Fortunately, Uber will be remembered as the evil company that did not care about driver income or passenger safety. Uber managed to destroy its brand before their business segment even took off.

  • Actually, I'll do it for you.

    "I'm getting what I want as cheap as possible, screw everyone else and damn the consequences."

  • Hyperbole Much? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "One can't help but speculate about future involvement with Google's autonomous car project."

    Why? This is now. Google's autonomous car project is a fun research project that will probably never see any real applications. Sure, a lot of the technology developed as part of it will make its way into products, but we'll likely never see autonomous cars sharing public roads with human drivers.

    Look, Google has taken most of world's advertising revenue and used it to fund a bunch of fun, geeky projects. It's kinda

  • Simple fix for ride-sharing/uber (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday July 06, 2015 @01:39PM (#50056379)

    This is the idea I came up with a few weeks ago on another Uber thread that would fix everything: registered destinations. A driver registers a destination for their trip, and only then are they shown potential "customers/fares/ridesharers/etc"-who have also registered a destination-along their route within a slight variance depending on trip length (driving across a city it might be a block or 2, across state several miles). They can only pick up a new passenger once they have reached their original destination and registered a new one or, if they had a passenger get off during their previous trip, a new passenger registers with an applicable destination.

    This kind of system would ensure that you are in fact ridesharing, ie. picking up passengers who are going to the same general area you are or a place you will pass along the way as opposed to working as an unlicensed taxi. Throw in a "fare" based on mileage/depreciation/a little extra for your time as opposed to Uber's surge pricing and you get rid of the issue of people taking this on as a job because it suddenly is not worth the effort. You still get compensated enough to offset the gas and depreciation of your car that you would be doing anyway, and at the end of the week you might have enough money to go out for a good dinner or maybe even enough for a trip for 2 to the movies.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's nothing wrong with your notion of a ridesharing service, but I see it as complementary to something like Uber, rather than a replacement or a "fix". We still need Uber (or similar) to replace the outdated taxi systems.

    • It would be incredibly easy to hack. A third party message board of people needing a ride. It would also cut uber out of the loop as third party drivers would just pick people up. The problem with uber is it is purely a race to the bottom.

      What would give uber some credibility is huge insurance policy that is in effect anytime an uber driver is logged in, and that uber drivers help fund based on number hours logged in. And wifi cameras in the car.And a list of drivers who cannot respond to certain custome

    • Except that Uber couldn't actually make any money with this restriction. See, they are an illegal cab company that needs to have a roster of professional drivers. If you went to the Uber app and nobody was going your way, well, after a while, you probably wouldn't bother. The Uber users I know value reliability. Suddenly there wouldn't be enough drivers / customers to get a network effect. Most of us who own cars do so for the convenience. Taking somebody else with you on your trip isn't really worth the

    • This is the idea I came up with a few weeks ago on another Uber thread that would fix everything: registered destinations. A driver registers a destination for their trip, and only then are they shown potential "customers/fares/ridesharers/etc"-who have also registered a destination-along their route within a slight variance depending on trip length (driving across a city it might be a block or 2, across state several miles). They can only pick up a new passenger once they have reached their original destination and registered a new one or, if they had a passenger get off during their previous trip, a new passenger registers with an applicable destination.

      This kind of system would ensure that you are in fact ridesharing, ie. picking up passengers who are going to the same general area you are or a place you will pass along the way as opposed to working as an unlicensed taxi. Throw in a "fare" based on mileage/depreciation/a little extra for your time as opposed to Uber's surge pricing and you get rid of the issue of people taking this on as a job because it suddenly is not worth the effort. You still get compensated enough to offset the gas and depreciation of your car that you would be doing anyway, and at the end of the week you might have enough money to go out for a good dinner or maybe even enough for a trip for 2 to the movies.

      It sounds like a great idea.

      If Google do something similar they might be able to profit off providing the software because it'd be another forum for their advertising (business gets better value for their advertising). That'd be a win-win(-win-win?)

      Passengers get cheaper transport, drivers get to defray driving costs and maybe qualify for faster routes (depending on transport lane rules and tolls, and both parties have more money to spend on other things), governments pay less in road costs (reduction in v

  • This is great for the world and people getting together and carpooling is wonderful for the environment, however as a business model it falls into a much smaller category. After finding a carpool group that works people will likely stop using the app and just pay each other and exchange information since going to work is pretty much an every day occurrence. This effectively will cut out the middle-man for any really successful matches.

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