Uber's tech and business model is relatively easy to replicate. So much so, that in many of their markets they already have at least one close competitor, or near-perfect competitor if you count Lyft (who have a similarly good app to Uber in my estimation; many of the other substitutes seem to have a pretty acceptable app that is missing some of the polish of Uber).
This makes their business vulnerable to price competition and raises doubts about their ability to make large profits over any long period of time. At the moment, they are losing money, but their (still high, imo) valuation is based on the fact that they are the biggest player and this means they have 'mind share' / brand awareness. If they try to start making a profit e.g. by pricing above their costs and not giving so many subsidies / bonuses, then they are vulnerable to any of their numerous competitors stealing market share by undercutting / offering their own bonuses or subsidies. They are already in fierce competition in many markets so it doesn't seem that their brand is necessarily enough to give them a huge and defensible advantage.
By contrast, all reports I have read (e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/7c8e1d02-2ff2-11e9-8744-e7016697f... ) indicate that Waymo's self-driving tech is the best in the market by some margin, with Cruise a distant second (and everyone else, including Uber, way behind that). And Waymo's technology is fundamentally more complicated and difficult to copy than a taxi hailing app. You couldn't have multiple local competitors to Waymo popping up in each city around the world, in the same way you have with Uber. So their competitive advantage seems a lot more defensible, meaning that their potential to earn defensible profits from their technology seem stronger in the long run. Continuing on this idea of defensibility: whereas people are happy to try any new cab-hailing app that launches with a promotion, the decision on which self-driving tech to use is going to be a lot more strict, in that unless it really works, it's not viable. So having the best tech makes a BIG difference, unlike for ride sharing.
The car industry is worth $1tn+ per year. The market for ride sharing is probably one or two orders of magnitude smaller than that ($12bn by 2025 according to this: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ride-sharing-market... , although Uber's revenues are already $11bn so I question the accuracy of this). Uber is a loss-making and non-unique ride sharing company with so-far unfilled aspirations to develop market-ready self-driving tech. Waymo is a self-driving tech company with apparently real potential to disrupt the trillion-dollar car industry with their unique technology.
Finally, Waymo's valuation is only on paper, whereas Uber's is in a public market. As WeWork (and Uber) have recently demonstrated, private valuations may not hold in private markets. However, given the reasons above, I actually think that the Waymo valuation might be more reasonable than the Uber one.
Wow. I just looked at Cruise's numbers. 19Bn. That explains a lot. I guess I've been way out of touch with happenings of self driving world. Thank you for the details.
I've been paying for Google Drive for several months because I really, really want it to work, but it's actually kinda useless as it causes constant instability and 120%+ CPU load on my 2012 Macbook Pro. This means that I frequently close the application down, so it's not actually covering me and if I lost my computer, the most recent files probably wouldn't be covered. There's been an open issue about this in the support forums for months and there's no news on when they're going to fix it...
I switched to Arq with Glacier as my "House Burns Down" backup, as I already backup to a Time Machine external drive at home. I'm very happy with it, but of course, I've never tried to get the data back yet.
> I'm very happy with it, but of course, I've never tried to get the data back yet.
Not to be that guy, but... if you don't have a tested restoration plan for a backup, you don't have a backup!
Nothing's worse than losing all your data with no backup... except for losing all your data and going to restore from your backup, only to find that all your data there is gone as well!
I uninstalled Google Drive myself... I just don't "get it", it doesn't seem to work as well as Dropbox, and it's kind of cool I can see my Google Docs, but organizing them in Drive doesn't appear to organize them in the "Drive" link of my Gmail, etc...
Yea, the native clients suck, but then again Google was never known for making solid desktop apps (it's not really in their DNA after all). I have similar experiences as you, so I use it purely from my web browser now. The website has gotten more functional and easy to use lately.
This makes their business vulnerable to price competition and raises doubts about their ability to make large profits over any long period of time. At the moment, they are losing money, but their (still high, imo) valuation is based on the fact that they are the biggest player and this means they have 'mind share' / brand awareness. If they try to start making a profit e.g. by pricing above their costs and not giving so many subsidies / bonuses, then they are vulnerable to any of their numerous competitors stealing market share by undercutting / offering their own bonuses or subsidies. They are already in fierce competition in many markets so it doesn't seem that their brand is necessarily enough to give them a huge and defensible advantage.
By contrast, all reports I have read (e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/7c8e1d02-2ff2-11e9-8744-e7016697f... ) indicate that Waymo's self-driving tech is the best in the market by some margin, with Cruise a distant second (and everyone else, including Uber, way behind that). And Waymo's technology is fundamentally more complicated and difficult to copy than a taxi hailing app. You couldn't have multiple local competitors to Waymo popping up in each city around the world, in the same way you have with Uber. So their competitive advantage seems a lot more defensible, meaning that their potential to earn defensible profits from their technology seem stronger in the long run. Continuing on this idea of defensibility: whereas people are happy to try any new cab-hailing app that launches with a promotion, the decision on which self-driving tech to use is going to be a lot more strict, in that unless it really works, it's not viable. So having the best tech makes a BIG difference, unlike for ride sharing.
The car industry is worth $1tn+ per year. The market for ride sharing is probably one or two orders of magnitude smaller than that ($12bn by 2025 according to this: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ride-sharing-market... , although Uber's revenues are already $11bn so I question the accuracy of this). Uber is a loss-making and non-unique ride sharing company with so-far unfilled aspirations to develop market-ready self-driving tech. Waymo is a self-driving tech company with apparently real potential to disrupt the trillion-dollar car industry with their unique technology.
Finally, Waymo's valuation is only on paper, whereas Uber's is in a public market. As WeWork (and Uber) have recently demonstrated, private valuations may not hold in private markets. However, given the reasons above, I actually think that the Waymo valuation might be more reasonable than the Uber one.