Gene Marks, over at Forbes.com believes that Google is a great innovator, but keeps making the same mistake. He believes that both Google Glass and driverless cars are solutions looking for customers.
Google has brought us innovations — from search and maps to Gmail and collaboration services, that have literally changed our world. And great ideas keep coming from Google. Yet the company continues to make the same mistake. Over and over. I don’t mean the ones that result in product failures (and there have been quite a few over the years). I mean something a little more fundamental.
Take Google Glass. For those that haven’t seen it, it’s a pair of glasses that understands your verbal commands so that it can instantly perform tasks for you, like snapping a photo, taking a video, providing driving directions or searching a database. Glass is a great idea with great technology. It demonstrates the future power of the Internet of Things. There’s just one problem: no one is buying it.
The mistake [with driverless cars] is the same as with Glass: it’s a product without customers. It’s Google assuming that someday someone will actually buy a driverless car. Not a hobbyist or an eccentric millionaire. But a customer who actually needs or desires a driverless car. Someone who, given the choice of spending $30K on a car that they fully control and can go anywhere they want at any speed they want — or another, likely more expensive buggy that will only travel on certain routes at slower speeds and with less options. Hmm, which car would you buy?
However, despite the lack of immediate buyers, Marks believes that Google is well aware of the risks. It is the fact that it has huge financial resources which will allow it to continue until the markets change or are developed. Google is not looking at the next few years ahead, but rather at decades ahead when, it hopes, all the investment will prove to have been worthwhile.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:00AM
"driverless cars are solutions looking for customers"
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean the rest of us don't. I would gladly buy a driverless car, I'd even pay extra for it. Doubly so if I can send it back home for my wife to use while I'm at work! Then I'd only need one car instead of two. The fact that I can perform other tasks while the car is in motion is a huge plus.
I love to drive, but it gets boring really quick.
(Score: 2) by SrLnclt on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:09AM
Initially I was a skeptic. People like driving. The liability will kill it. How will it co-exist with regular vehicles? What about rain, ice, snow, etc.?
But the more I thought about it the more I like it. Not having to pay attention to the road constantly - especially on long trips. Being able to read the news or do other things on a phone or tablet on the way to work. Safety should actually improve. Even with some accidents, I will come to trust the technology more than every distracted idiot with a phone and a big mac. Large cities could re-purpose express or carpool lanes to driverless only. I could see large improvements for rush hour traffic in large population centers once enough people are using them. It may take a while, but the number of positives will eventually drive the customers towards it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:12PM
People like driving.
Young people like driving. I'll bet TFA's author is under 30. Young people are adrenaline junkies. I started disliking driving around age 30, by the time I was 40 I was wishing for a driverless car. Now that I'm retired I'm begging for one; people are idiots and assholes, especially when behind the wheel.
When I drive down to St Louis, I set the cruise to three MPH under the limit, and I have a stress-free trip that takes an extra five minutes (do the math).
You are right: people eating, texting, drinking, and being dangerous assholes without the phone of big mac or screaming kids should make everyone want a driverless car.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:20PM
You naiuled it. There are milions of baby boomers out there who will still want to get around even though their eyesight and reflexes are on the cusp of significant degredation in the coming years. They will want, no, need driverless cars. I look forward to them getting all the kinks worked out before I get old.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:32PM
I could see this being a big plus in the rental car industry. I live in a tourist area and the "driving" done by some of these people (a friend of mine pegged them as Tourons) is frightening. Imagine a tourist being able to pick up a rental car at the airport and telling it "such and such a hotel" and being safely driven directly there.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:48PM
The one thing I'm looking forward to is the optimization that intra-vehicle communication and driveless cars will allow for in combination - just imagine the flow of traffic you can achieve when all the cars instantly knows when the cars nearby break or speed up (and not having to wait for it to become visually appearant)... and then to be able to have the entire lane of cars to adjust their speeds when the first car slams its brakes.
Now also imagine crossing (with cars) when being able to time it perfectly.. a lone car comming to cross a busy lane could have a gap created for it to slip through with minimal interruption in the flow of the other traffic (rather than having to stop entire crossing lanes)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:10AM
Doubly so if I can send it back home for my wife to use while I'm at work! Then I'd only need one car instead of two.
That's just brilliant.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by len_harms on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:22AM
then I'd only need one car
You are only touching on the implications of driverless cars.
It would mean the entire trucking industry would go from drivers only driving 10-13 hours a day to the trucks rolling 24/7. You would need about 1/2-2/3 less trucks in your fleet depending on how you run your business. That is huge with less personal running it to boot. Less human regulations. All around the trucking industry will benefit the most first. I expect interstate driving to be first.
You could share a car with a bunch more of your family. Like say your kids and parents too.
The entire roadside motel/hotel industry would implode as people would sleep in their cabins/cars. It would not go away but it would be seriously dented.
Anyone who thinks 'this is a solution looking for a problem' is probably just trolling for clicks. There is a large segment of the population who would want control. But there would eventually be a whole generation that grew up with it. They would just see it as something old people do.
But right now neither of those items is close to being 'done'. They are just starting. v0.3 of a product is usually not ready yet but shows a lot of promise.
(Score: 1) by typhoon on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:54AM
Totally agree, I'm another who will buy a driverless car once they are stable.
Driverless cars will/could:
- save me a fortune in transport costs using public transport. I know I should use PT, but it sucks and I hate it.
- evolve the taxi industry and make things like Uber a totally different company. Pre-booking your morning commute will be great.
- several family who live close together could share private cars.
- getting home by summoning the family car from home to you saves your partner from doing it. Even better for folks who have kids.
- totally change courier/delivery services. Far better than drones.
Once the cars are approved, perhaps road based drones might also handle a lot of uses too.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:14AM
It wouldn't surprise me if driverless cars caused a huge dent in the auto industry as well. Sales would be huge going in as people replaced their existing horribly dangerous cars with driverless models, but once that transition has taken place, there would be far less demand for cars overall (fewer crashes, more sharing, and smaller fleets to name a few reasons). I certainly believe that we're in interesting times and I look forward to seeing this technology mature.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Techwolf on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:29AM
>It would mean the entire trucking industry would go from drivers only driving 10-13 hours a day to the trucks rolling 24/7.
I drive a truck for a living and I have seen this spew out so many times and is just so out of touch with reality. Here is my views on that.
First off, I would LOVE to have auto-cruse. Note what I said there, auto-cruise, not auto-drive. What I want is to be able to get on the interstate and hit cruse and not only will it keep speed, but also drive. This tech will be out in a few years I think. This alone will prevent many single truck crashes where the driver just simply feel asleep at the wheel or more common, failed to realized what was going on around him due to lack of sleep.
What about the full auto-drive people say will put us out of work? Not going to happen for many decades. Current autodrive tech can not handle city streets and many state roads with a big truck. Currently it can handle it using a car, but can't a truck due to all new variables, many roads are not designed with large trucks in mind, so have to do a lot of forward predicting of the road ahead of the truck. Like sharp S curves where oncoming traffic may not fit with the truck in it. Right hand turns where the truck has to swing wide, but also figure how to do that with the opposing traffic lane next to it. I have literally stop the truck in the middle of an stop-lighted intersection and directed traffic from the cab of the truck to clear a way so I can complete my turn. Basically, a truck break many minor laws getting to and from shipper/receivers, the big one is crossing the white/yellow line or taking up two lanes, blocking traffic from blocking the truck(swinging wide for a right turn, but do in a way the trailer blocks traffic from trying to pass on the right side). City cops never bother trucks due to they know the trucks have to do that, and in some cases, help them out of a jam. DOT and state cops however...is another rant for another post. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:18PM
I used to write the software that automated your logs. My job was to automate yours. I fully expect it to be the interstates first especially places like the midwest or the outback of Australia. They probably will use a in/out town depot drop off procedure. To minimize intown driving for awhile. With local guys running the trucks from the out of town pads to the local drop offs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_driver#Truck_driver_problems_.28U.S..29 [wikipedia.org]
This is why the LTL and private fleets will go hog wild with it. Driver fatigue and drug usage is rampant. I saw a guy this weekend who said to his waitress and I quote "I just got done driving 18 hours". WELL out of spec both daily and driving. Yet his logs probably showed 10-11 hours. The bigger fleets will not even blink at the cost as it will ROI in 2-3 years. One truck roll saved and they probably have already paid for most of the fleet. I assisted in about 4 truck recoveries in my time automating this stuff. Full load recovered. That alone paid for itself.
Your job is a dead end job in 10-20 years. They *will* autmoate it. They *are* working on it. They can jam a rack of computers into the cab of a truck. Local guys have a bit longer but they are working on that too.
DOT and state cops however
I bet... I have heard a few doozies over the years. My favorite was dudes pointing at the box and saying 'my logs are in there' and the cop waives them on :)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:35AM
There is a large segment of the population who would want control. But there would eventually be a whole generation that grew up with it.
Probably not.
Oh, I agree many will use these for the boring commute. Maybe as a second car.
But driving is fun. People like to drive. Perhaps not all those people living in the inner city, dependent on, and well versed in mass transit, and therefor never learned to drive or never owned a car. These are the people who will RENT, but never own a self-driving car.
But once you get out of the city core, people like to drive.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:13AM
I'm hearing a surprising number of people say they would buy a driverless car in an instant. This ranges from friends who have long drives each way to work, to the number of 16-25 year olds who have no intention of getting a drivers license. Used to be that almost every suburb dwelling kid wanted to learn to drive the moment they hit 16.
Obviously this is a regional anecdote and anyone can change their mind later in life; a friend in her 30s just got her own license and car after saying for years that she wouldn't.
I personally like to drive, and have a manual even. But there's times even I wish I could just hit a Knight Rider-like Auto-Cruise button.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:16AM
It still remains to be seen if you will be able to operate one without a drivers license.
If it has any form of manual operation, brakes, gas pedal, steering wheel, I'm saying no.
Same goes for sending your kids to school in it, or coming home drunk, even if in the back seat.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:13PM
The driverless semi won't happen; you need a human to protect the cargo, even if the truck is driving itself.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:59PM
A dude shows up and puts a shotgun in your window do you give them the load or do you die for it? Most drivers give up the truck and the police pick the truck up 1-2 days later. In south america for awhile it was you could end up dead in a ditch even if you gave up the load. Most of them have gps/radios on them that beacon every 5-10 mins.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:09AM
"driverless cars are solutions looking for customers"
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean the rest of us don't. I would gladly buy a driverless car, I'd even pay extra for it.
Amen to that. I know I'm in the minority with this, but I actually dislike driving and would love to be able to have a car without needing to drive the fucking thing.
A similar argument could be made for the Glass. It's not a solution looking for a problem, it's a solution to the wrong problem. It's made to appeal to the twitch/justinTV/etc streaming crowd, because that's a demographic that will happily give Google even more data to use and profile them with, rather than being a useful product to a larger group.
I've said it before, but the problem with Glass for me isn't that it's useless, it's that its intended use case is wrong. I don't care for the recording aspect, but I'd love a low-profile personal HUD I could attach to (sun)glasses that acts as an extension of a mobile phone. Unobtrusive to others and providing useful info real-time to me without having to pull out and look at a phone. Sort of like a visual equivalent of bluetooth earpieces. I don't want recording capability, but I'd love to be able to get navigation info, messages, etc. without having to hold or constantly look at a phone.
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:22PM
The best example of a wearable HUD I've ever heard is working on a car. If you have a recording of how you took something apart that you can reference for putting it back together, not to mention searchable manuals and schematics, that makes the job much easier and more fluid. The best part being that you don't have to stop what you're doing to pull up a reference.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:29AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:18PM
One problem that would have to be addressed is cleaning the cars after use.
Not a big problem, though. It would be trivial to have a person sitting at say, a gas station, with a vacuum and a sponge that checks every car in the area after a fare and either cleans it or sends it on its way. In the suburbs of Chicago where I live, practically every gas station in my area has its own automatic car wash, so this is even easier to implement.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:35AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:20PM
I'll buy a driverless car if and only if it isn't filled with proprietary software and privacy-invading 'features' (like tracking and phoning home).
(Score: 1) by Translation Error on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:42PM
(Score: 1) by art guerrilla on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:57PM
two words:
uber driverless cars
okay, three words:
uber driverless cars legalized
okay...
nevermind...
i can see that as a great thing when you go to another city, call up a driverless car on your tablet/smartphone app, and have it whisk you around an unfamiliar area without getting lost, wasting time, etc... sounds pretty damn great to me...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:11AM
Google Glass and Google Cars will both be game changers that they will sell heaps of. Just not yet though. The problem is both are just tech demos at this point, neither are fully developed products, because the tech does not yet exist.
Google Glass has some pretty obvious 'Killer Apps' waiting in the wings but at present the pitifully short battery life combined with the other minimal specs keeps it in the lab. But everyone (at least everyone here) knows Moore's Law will deliver sooner or later, or we will invent a better energy storage device. But a Glass like product with HD resolution and all day battery life will displace the smartphone instantly as the must have device. The phone would likely remain for some time, but with little or no importance given to the display, just the radios, storage and CPU power because of the larger battery.
Same for Google Cars, right now there is severe limits on what one can actually do. Although just as soon as they can teach a machine to drive on Interstates and major highways it will end long haul trucking as we have known it. They will move down the automotive food chain from there. Although I'd guess they jump to replacing most cab drivers pretty quickly as well; so I hope Uber and Lyft enjoy their brief moment and are banking as much .bomb cash as they can while it lasts. As for end user single passenger cars, those will likely be the last replaced, and even then I expect enough exceptions to remain (and user demand) that manual drive will be a standard feature for many decades.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:51AM
Yes, especially because of the occasional need to go off-road or around an obstacle that the computer cannot comprehend. There are plenty of unpaved roads where only your own common sense can tell you where to drive and where to park and what to stay away from.
On the other hand, manual controls in an automatic car could be cheaply added just as a Logitech USB steering wheel (for example.) There will be no mechanical linkage of controls and actuators. You even could move the manual control kit from the left to the right (or back) as it is proper for the country.
I, personally, would be very much interested in a working self-driving car. Some of my trips are 8-9 hours one way. In winter a bunch of people leave home for work when it's dark, raining, or snowing, and return from work - dog tired - in the same conditions. A computer would be a better driver than a person who just put in his 9-10 hours of work and can't keep his eyes open on a slippery road with no visible lane markings.
At the same time I would have little to no use of Google Glass as it is marketed today. As I don't fiddle with my phone all day long (it is not even a smartphone,) I have nothing to display there. A whole lot of GG's market failure - and popular rejection - is caused by the camera that may or may not stream data to the phone or to other servers. A display-only device would be a much better product. If you need to film something, there is already a camera in the phone - pull it out, point at the object and film all you want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:19AM
There was a great Prisoneresque science-fiction show from New Zealand called "This is Not My Life." They got the automatic car right: tell it where to go, and it would auto-drive there, but you could take the wheel yourself if you wanted to or if you needed to do something the AI couldn't handle. If you tried to escape the village, though, it would shut down giving some excuse like "carbon credits exceeded." Sort of a metaphor for the whole program of the mildly-dystopian future: choices are yours, and you can go along with the life programmed for you, or you could take control and make your own choices, although society would set limits that you couldn't pass and would enforce them. Like it or not, it's a realistic vision of an automated car. You'll have the convenience of giving up control when you want (and the safety of doing so when you're tired), the ability to take control when you need it, but there will be an override somewhere that can give control to the authorities: that's the fear that will drive a some people away from the automated car or the automated society. The show left it intentionally vague as to how much of a realistic fear that was, which I appreciated immensely.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:05AM
The authorities do not need an automated car to stop you from going somewhere. They just block the road. Have you tried crossing a land border without a passport? Or driving into Area 51, or any other military base? There is also a top secret override that works on any car. It is called spike strips and firearms.
But if you ask me, 99.9(9)% of the population have no intent to run away from police or into forbidden areas. That rarely works anyway because it's a game that you cannot win if the police really wants you stopped.
Nevertheless, any automated car probably can be forced to reject remote commands by very simple means. For example, the radio receiver can be jammed, or its antenna broken off. LIDARs can be defeated with a duct tape. And so on. Unless the car is really paranoid, in absence of data from sensors it will revert to manual control. That would be necessary for driving in a forest, for example, or in a tunnel, or in a snowstorm.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:35PM
or in a snowstorm.
This makes it useless in large regions of the country. Think of how idiotically people drive in the first snow of the season, and now imagine them driving for the first time in a long time, in a snowstorm. It'll turn an annoyance into a disaster.
Another interesting thing to think about... there's no way for cops to tell if someone has been drinking from observation unless their BAC is like 0.15. In a self driving car they could be in an alcohol coma or dead and the cops couldn't tell. Yet they'll be required to drive in extremely dangerous situations at less than a moments notice when the auto-drive gives up.
There's this assumption that computer driven cars will be safer, which I think is fairly ignorant of how computer operated anything actually works.
That will lead to higher insurance premiums for self driving cars.
So run the math. Lets say one is $10K more, which is probably an absolute minimum for redundancy and reliability of all those actuators and sensors. Probably more like $25K more. Then an extra $500/month for insurance because they're way more dangerous and kill more people and obviously cost more to fix after the crash. The problem is for $25K upfront and $500/month I can trivially hire a personal assistant with a drivers license to drive me around.
In an era of long term economic decline for 99% of the population, it doesn't make sense to promote something that'll put them outta work (because there are already so many looking for work driving wages down to the minimum) AND at the same time increasing capital costs they'll never afford. Making it sound like a 1%er toy, but without wide deployment they'll never get debugged, so the 1%ers won't buy any after the first year once all the stories about buggy cars get out.
It just looks like a dismal failure of an idea.
(Score: 2) by Dale on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:44PM
The numbers don't really make sense to me. $500 more for insurance per month is an extra $6k per year. I have full coverage on two vehicles and it runs under $1,500 per year ($750 per vehicle for easier math). So your self driving car is $6,750 per year in insurance or a 900% increase. 9x increase doesn't make any type of sense. I might buy into an increase, but not 9x. Even if you assumed our rate was double and was $1,500 for one car it would still work out to a 500% increase (7,500 / 1,500) which still doesn't make sense.
Will the car cost more? Sure. Hybrids cost more now (many more than the fuel savings most people will actually save). The higher costs haven't stopped Hybrids from selling though. Price for self-driving won't stop them from selling even at a $10-25k premium over a regular car.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:02PM
My insurance estimate was based on a self driving car inevitably being a much more dangerous driver than a stereotypical teen boy new driver, so I figured 3x more expensive than a teen boy.
Rates might drop with experience. Or maybe not.
One interesting problem with self driving cars, is one idiot goes out drinking and crashes, if anything I'm even less likely the next day to replicate his "achievement". But with software driven cars you'll have stereotypical software problems affecting perhaps millions at a time. Software upgrade goes out with "Imperial to Metric" bug and every single one crashes the next morning, that kind of thing is going to be excruciatingly expensive for insurance. Thats why I predict the rates will be so high. Triple a teen boy cost probably still isn't high enough. Whoops new software mis-identifies very small children of specific skin color as animals and stops trying to swerve out of the way killing 100 in one day across the country or whatever. Its going to be incredibly expensive to insure those things.
Also no fair "google/apple/toyota" -ing the product into being flawless. You know GM is going to ship at typical "GM quality" levels and its going to destroy vehicles and kill people, and that adds up to serious money even if the Google or Toyota implementation is stereotypically flawless.
Imagine a little kid getting a license, if such a thing were legal. What kind of insurance payment would you expect for a 10 year old boy? Triple is probably too low and 10 year old boy is probably too experienced, having watched my kids play Mario Kart at that age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:52PM
Spike strips and firearms are messy and dangerous. A thoughtful dystopia eliminates such disturbing influences: shutting down the car politely makes everyone happier.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:12AM
I assumed keeps making the same mistake was referring to their habit of dropping useful products (Wave and Reader spring to mind), but no.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:22AM
Or Orkut, the top social media site in Brazil and India. Those aren't growing markets, no sir.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:20AM
Gene Marks isn't thinking long term, and that's to be expected from someone who writes for a financial rag.
Google Glass is still a mediocre product but no doubt Google has gotten patents out of it, which means even if it isn't Google who makes it a breakthrough product, they'll still get paid. In the future where we have unlimited processing power and bandwidth, Glass video could be massively mined to see what advertisements are effective. This would mean every ad, every promotion, every sign would be recorded by viewer. It could even track displays wearers approach in stores, and which products they compare. Though it is horridly invasive, it would allow Google to offer tracking similar to web ads.
Driverless cars are a similar initiative that in the short term will only generate patents. Between small drones and driverless cars, delivery service could get even cheaper. Longer term, assuming people use them, they can be used to better track who goes where, similar to how cell phones are used now. Combined with Glass, driverless cars can track what signs and ads are seen in transit. After all, if you aren't driving, you'll be looking out the window or at your Google Android device. Did I mention AI and lifeform detection patents?
Also, elderly people who are unsafe driving themselves will love to maintain independence with driverless cars.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:46AM
Forbes has also been a fairly serious Apple "fanboy" mag for the last couple of years.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:49PM
Gene Marks isn't thinking long term, and that's to be expected from someone who writes for a financial rag.
I'd agree and provide an alternate explanation that he's super butt hurt at the very concept of corporate R+D. Why all those geeks need to be downsized to boost exec salaries! Right out of a parody of HP or any former technical great, at least in the USA.
(Score: 1) by acharax on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:27AM
Other than offering more space than it's competitors at the time (who crippled their free services by restricting inbox space to ~15-20 MB) it was just bog standard webmail.
(Score: 1) by acharax on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:34AM
*its
(Score: 1) by zugedneb on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:23AM
mostly the system used for storing and tagging mails and the chat system...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:32AM
"The system for storing e-mails" was just haivng 1 gig of storage.
Their idea wasn't tagging (which wasn't innovative) but searching. Which, for a company that made a large fortune on searching, is fucking awful.
(Score: 1) by zugedneb on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:25AM
As an afterthought, I was so happy for the introduction of Starred mails. I could add a star to my most beloved conversations...
mind was blown...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:49AM
it was just bog standard webmail.
How quaint, someone who actually reads mail in a browser.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by acharax on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:26AM
Reading? Heh. My primary use for webmail was as a receptible for spam before sites like mailinator came in vogue. I suspect this'll hold true for many people.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:21PM
My primary use is that I don't have to change email addresses every time I change ISPs; I've had the same address for 15 years now. Of course, I never log into webmail, I usually check mail on my phone's email client and answer email with Thunderbird on the computer.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:14PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:56PM
I don't think it was innovative; didn't it have the best UI by far for the time though, as well as an abundance of space (again, for the time)?
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:36PM
Personally, it changed the way I thought about email. Yes, it offered a lot of space. A lot of space that continued to increase over time. The innovative idea was that I never needed to delete anything ever again. Any email I ever received would be instantly searchable forever. I
Compared to the way I thought about email in the past this was a big change. It's easy to forget, after all these years, the pain of dealing with email quotas: the choices that had to be made, the manual sorting, moving, deleting, etc. All of these were obviated by what felt like at the time limitless storage.
Another innovative feature was the use of labels instead of folders. An email can only be in one folder at a time. But with the introduction of the labels paradigm, an email can have multiple labels.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 01 2015, @11:02AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by redneckmother on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:21AM
All I see is " more expensive AND buggy".
Sometimes, technology isn't the solution - it's the PROBLEM.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:42AM
likely more expensive buggy
All I see is " more expensive AND buggy".
Funny, I took this as a "buggy" in neither of those senses, nor in the sense of buggery, but rather I imagined a young person, riding for free in baby carriage, you know, one of those that has a steering wheel to keep the young scion (no, that is not a rebranded Toyota!) entertained for the ride, but who at one point realized that the steering wheel actually controlled nothing! And in fact was a functional analogy to a pacifier! So the very thought of the possibility of an adult version of the same, a self-driving automobile that may quite possibly have a non-functional steering wheel to calm the occupants, if enough to rekindle the toddler outrage.
Of course, the worst possible scenario is buggy software for the self-driving car combined with a placebo steering wheel. At least Thelma and Louise got to hold hands.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:16PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:25AM
Driverless cars would be a serious blessing. As it stands now, I think people who drive to work on the Long Island Expressway are certifiably insane. If you could let the car drive itself, it would be slightly less insane, though still more insane than taking the train. Google Glass has extraordinary benefits that are not hard to imagine, especially if you combine them with haptic feedback gloves or some-such; it would be an incredibly useful training tool.
So the premise of this article seems hard to accept, and more like a hit piece paid for by an interested party.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:36AM
If it goes at least the speed limit and can drive my route to work I'll be interested. If it does so at a price I can afford then it's a sure thing.
I also imagine.. if it can drive itself without any driver at all (I doubt that will be legal) it could be great for sharing a car with the wife. It would also be great for people in the city where parking is expensive. If you don't need your car right away very often just have it drive itself to cheaper parking further away.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:46AM
I still want Glass! I just don't want it at the price they are charging! It's insane! WTF are they even thinking?
It was the same way to a lesser extent with the Motorola lapdock. I really wanted one! But the price they charged was more than it was worth. It was just a portable HDMI screen, keyboard and trackpad. They wanted enough money to buy a whole Netbook! You could but all of the above plus CPU, RAM and storage too. Now it's discontinued, cheap, and I finally have one. My phone is getting old but I will not upgrade my phone because then I would lose the Lapdock capability. Thanks a lot Google!
Google bought Motorola, it's like they are developing technology just to kill it! Why? I think both might have sold if they had only priced them realistically.
By the way.. I don't want Glass so I can record strangers without them knowing or anything like that. I'd probably even put a lenscap on it just because I know people are paranoid about that. I want to use it to watch videos and/or read webpages while I am supposed to be doing other things. Does it have apps for that? I know the resolution would be pretty bad but I don't care. I might even try to write some apps if I had one. Having it alert me about texts, emails, alarms and stuff without me picking up my phone would be cool too.
(Score: 1) by OGbear on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:23AM
A refreshing 'mistake'.
It seems that the folks at Google are taking the long view. It's good to hear of a company that doesn't have a 'long range planning horizon' of only two or three quarters.
I am reminded of one of the Chief Scientists at Bell Labs who considered 'short term' to be any project that produced revenue in less than five years. Many of the big Japanese lab take the same attitude -- "We are inventing products for the next decade."
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:43AM
this is how sick and twisted our country has become, that innovation and thinking in the long term, thinking beyond just quarterly profits, is considered a mistake.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:52PM
I had this same thought. The driverless car example shows just how shallow minded the author is on this subject. Yes, the driverless car still has many issues to work out, and demand is limited because of this, but why not start developing the tech now, so that you are in a position to sell when technology does catch up to consumers expectations? As for Glass, how is it bad to continue to develop a product even if there is no apparent market for it yet? The Post-it Note [wikipedia.org] was developed in just this way. What gets me is that the author seems to admit all this in the last paragraph, they spend $10B a year on R&D, and yet still have $62B as cash on hand. Hardly a huge risk. I guess "Google's mistake" makes for a better headline than "Google's R&D makes cool things".
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:20AM
Yeah, it would be nice to go to work, send the car home, and let the wife go to work. That's doubling the amount of traffic on the road. Sure, in some cases it may not matter as the roads aren't busy in the other direction. But close to work, like Sorrento Valley in the San Diego area, you're talking extreme gridlock with doubled traffic.
Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:51AM
Not to mention the fact that driver-less cars does not equate to energy-use free cars.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:31AM
Not to mention the fact that driver-less cars does not equate to energy-use free cars.
It does not equate; but it may help still if an autonomous electric car, after delivering you to work, can drive itself to a charging station and take its sweet time charging up. You would hate to stick around your car for 40-50 minutes while it charges; but that time is not lost if you are not involved.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:47PM
Its also insightful that if I'm in "human driving mode" on a long road trip, sitting in a gas station for an hour would make me super pissed off.
But if I'm sitting in an automated car, its much like train trips I've taken. So the train stopped. Why would I care, I'm busy watching movie / having sex / reading book / working on code.
If the car decided all on its own to pull over into a reserved over the internet charging station for an hour, what do I care, I'm busy posting to SN not driving.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:25PM
No, it would half the amount of traffic. Rather than each of you driving a separate car, now you only need one.
If you both start work at the same time you'll still need two cars, though.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:51AM
The driver-less car may be fine for the US, but I don't see it happening in Europe for a long, long time. There are numerous reasons for this; the difficulty of providing the supporting infrastructure etc. But one thing that is not being considered is that different countries have different laws. Even in Europe where the laws are supposedly homogenized, each country has minor amendments and changes that a person can easily cope with but I'm not sure that an automated vehicle will. Traveling from France to Britain or reverse will require driving on the 'wrong' side of the road. People can make this change (although with a few accidents each year by people who don't make the change quickly enough!) but the car will have to be programmed for a completely different set of rules just to get off the ferry. GPS you think? Nope, it will not work on the car deck of a ferry or in the chunnel and, on arrival, it will have to leave the ferry or chunnel and burst onto the road system with no warning or update time whatsoever - not knowing where it is now but only where it last had GPS reception. Are there no tunnels in America? I could have sworn that I had seen some on my last visit...
In each country, even in different towns in some cases, road markings, indicating bus lanes, special usage areas and parking rights,are different. My GPS is updated regularly but even so I often find new road layouts, changes of priority or even road works which will necessitate the 'driver' obeying a completely different set of rules to those that were in place only days before. How will a driver-less car cope with a burst water main which necessitates the car now driving on the 'wrong' side of the road under the control of either lights or a man wearing a day-glo jacket, or simply using common-sense? Or a temporary parking prohibition? Or parking that is prohibited between 1600-1800, Monday to Friday, except for public holidays? My village closes part of the village center for the weekly market, as do all the other villages and towns around here. All on different days, too. I'm not so sure that such a level of vehicle autonomy is achievable in the next 25 years, let alone the next decade.
And, while driving in the country, what if my car gets stuck in the mud at the side of the road after making room for a flock of sheep coming in the other direction or cows being taken for miliking. Will a driver-less car know how to extract itself from the mud or know how to drive slowly in the presence of animals? No - I guess it will remain stuck or simply stop moving which will only make things more difficult for those who do know how to drive properly and can easily manage such occurrences. Or should I have to buy 2 cars - one for normal rural driving and another to cope with the driving that I might experience in a town or city?
Unless we all drive driver-less cars the problems are going to continue to exist, and such cars might be able to cope with cities having wide roads but are worthless elsewhere. Can they cope with off-road? If not, no farmer around here is going to want one. The roads to farms are often only single track earthen roads with numerous 'hazards' on them - think livestock, pets, pot-holes that have to be avoided etc. How about reversing with a trailer? I know lots of people who can't do it but I bet a computer will struggle with the task as well.
Today's idiots point lasers at aircraft - but I can see GPS and car sensor jammers becoming all the rage in the years to come. It might be fine for the 'big city' but I suspect that I will always be able to do more with a vehicle that I can control than I will with a vehicle that thinks it can do better. I do see a use for automated vehicles involved with long distance haulage - they can travel between specific hubs and then transfer the load to a manned traction engine for the final deliveries, a point raised elsewhere in the comments. A good idea? Maybe - but we are a long way from seeing widespread adoption in my view.
These are not obscure 'edge cases' - this is how people live who don't want to spend hours each day commuting. In terms of area, Europe is mostly rural and agricultural and I cannot see a benefit from having a vehicle that can get you through a commute while the driver spends yet more time on a pad or laptop when every other aspect of driving will probably be significantly less than optimum. A long commute here is anything over 30 minutes.
On the other hand, if the driver-less car keeps the city dwellers out of the countryside, perhaps I should be supporting them more?!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:44PM
I do see a use for automated vehicles involved with long distance haulage - they can travel between specific hubs and then transfer the load to a manned traction engine for the final deliveries, a point raised elsewhere in the comments.
The problem with incredibly complicated gadgets and operations, is you've just described intermodal train transport. Or a weird parody of a ferry operation in Venice, maybe. The gadgets can be trivially defeated with some simple capital expenditures to put in rail tracks and some business improvements.
What would really kill driverless cars is a better, more modern, much faster, system for putting cars (with people in them) on trains and run some tracks down the interstate.
Looking at rush hour traffic, making a canal down the middle of the interstate and shoving conventional modern ferries and barges would be much faster and probably more fun (who says the car ferry can't have TV, movies, shopping, restaurant...).
Something like a flatbed cable car system with flatbed trailers to park cars on would probably work pretty well, or at least better than driverless cars.
It would cost money, but less than trying to implement driverless cars.
(Score: 1) by Synonymous Homonym on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:27PM
one thing that is not being considered is that different countries have different laws.
GPS is too unreliable for navigation. Dead reckoning works much better. In practice, you'd combine GPS/Glonass/Galileo/whatever the Chinese have with an IMU. That takes care of knowing which country you are in. Google also has Latitude, which navigates by WiFi hotspots and cell phone towers.
In each country, even in different towns in some cases, road markings, indicating bus lanes, special usage areas and parking rights,are different.
Computer readable road maps. Access to the internet and OpenStreetMap, and the maps can be updated in near real-time by the cars themselves. Google, of course, have their own map server. And they monitor all the RSS feeds announcing road works and jams. Traffic information is also broadcast to your car stereo in some areas.
what if my car gets stuck in the mud
I expect it will text another car or a service to pull it out, like most people would. Or it will send you a mail.
know how to drive slowly in the presence of animals? No
Sure, why not? Better than a human driver, even, because it can look in every direction at once and has no blind spots.
Or should I have to buy 2 cars - one for normal rural driving and another to cope with the driving that I might experience in a town or city?
Do you also have two computers, one for web browsing and one for composing documents?
Can they cope with off-road?
The challenge is to keep them on the road. Off-road is simpler.
no farmer around here is going to want one.
There are fleets of fully automatic harvesters in operation. Autonomous tractors don't seem desirable, though.
How about reversing with a trailer?
Humans have problems with it because it requires recursive thought. Computers are excellent with recursion.
Today's idiots point lasers at aircraft - but I can see GPS and car sensor jammers becoming all the rage in the years to come.
You think peole buy laser pointers specifically to point at aircraft?
It might be fine for the 'big city'
Urban environments are a much more difficult challenge than driving cross country. Not unsovable though, as evidenced by the problem having been solved by several teams independently.
I suspect that I will always be able to do more with a vehicle that I can control than I will with a vehicle that thinks it can do better.
You probably write your code in assembly because you don't trust the optimizing compiler.
I do see a use for automated vehicles involved with long distance haulage
They are called "ships".
we are a long way from seeing widespread adoption in my view.
About 17 years.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:26PM
Access to the internet and OpenStreetMap
As I said - not likely to be of much use in rural areas. In many areas around where I live, we can't even get a reliable telephone link unless we have a wire! And I don't see anyone rushing to install the infrastructure to change this situation. I still rely on plain old copper to fibre optic for my phone, but my neighbour, who usually spends most of his time in Paris, has to stand in his garden to get a phone connection whenever he returns 'home'.
Google also has Latitude, which navigates by WiFi hotspots and cell phone towers.
An additional problem with this - along with the previous paragraph regarding lack of WiFi or telephone towers - is it leads us back to the surveillance society - Big Brother will know every journey I make and when. I don't want that. I can drive for hours at the moment and nobody cares a jot about where I am or what I am doing. But I don't trust the government - any government - not to suck in all this free information on the back of 'preventing terrorism' or 'thinking of the children'. Terrorists haven't attacked a cabbage field or blown up a crop of potatoes as far back as I can remember....
I find it strange that Americans - who frequently throw up their hands in horror at the fear of camera surveillance in Europe - are now supporting a transport system that will depend upon being tracked accurately in order for it to function. I do not believe that the combination of GPS, combined with dead reckoning and signal strength from a handful of towers alone will give sufficient accuracy to enable a car to know which lane it is in when in rural areas
Sure, why not? Better than a human driver, even, because it can look in every direction at once and has no blind spots.
Ah, so I also have to buy a new trailer - or a sensor kit to fit to my existing trailer - when I already have the ability to turn my head around and do the job myself. [Wonders if that will be a sensor kit with the Ford connector, the Renault connector, or some special connector that is made by the manufacturer of the trailer? I might have spotted an early market opportunity...]
Off-road is simpler.
I have yet to see the map that will show me each and every drainage ditch in a field in order that my driver-less car doesn't try to drive across it. Off-road is simpler in some ways, but considerably harder in many others.
I remain convinced that this is a good idea in some areas and for some people, but not for everyone. It will be interesting to see which car draws the higher insurance premium.
(Score: 1) by Synonymous Homonym on Tuesday January 13 2015, @12:44PM
In many areas around where I live, we can't even get a reliable telephone link unless we have a wire! And I don't see anyone rushing to install the infrastructure to change this situation.
Good point. The link does not need to be high bandwidth, though. And transmission can be delayed, so uplinks don't need to be ubiquitious either. Still, a valid argument.
Big Brother will know every journey I make and when
If you carry a cell phone, Big Brother already does. For example:
http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-vorratsdaten [www.zeit.de]
I don't trust the government - any government - not to suck in all this free information
I trust they do. The question is what they do with it, and that, right now, is a problem, because we don't know.
so I also have to buy a new trailer - or a sensor kit to fit to my existing trailer - when I already have the ability to turn my head around and do the job myself.
I don't know why you think you need additional sensors on your trailer. They would help, I'm sure, but you don't have eyes on the back of your trailer either.
Off-road is simpler in some ways, but considerably harder in many others.
Mostly it depends on the car.
I remain convinced that this is a good idea in some areas and for some people, but not for everyone.
I can agree with that.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:06AM
My GPS is updated regularly but even so I often find new road layouts, changes of priority or even road works which will necessitate the 'driver' obeying a completely different set of rules to those that were in place only days before.
Just read an automotive trade magazine interview with a representative from TomTom (GPS & map provider).
http://www.ai-online.com/Adv/Previous/show_issue.php?id=6504#sthash.QZ21Jr3Y.dpbs [ai-online.com]
It says they are on a development path that will eventually result in live map changes -- the map database will be deliverable at any time with all the latest updates. They are looking ahead to more and more automation of driving as time goes on, sounded like this software goal was a few years away. Their current mapping scheme is a combination of their own mapping vans, user-input and a verification scheme before the update is posted. Eventually they want to include road works (construction, detours) and many other details that change frequently.
TomTom provide maps to VW Group and they appear to be well funded. Anyone know about the other mapping companies? Seems like they must be working in the same direction.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:24PM
THAT'S the killer problem? Really?
a) It knows it got on the ferry or entered the tunnel. It knows where it's going. So it can easily know what changes will be needed when it gets there.
b) There are plenty of other ways to know what side of the road to drive on. Look at the other cars. Look at what direction the street signs face. Hell in that example, look at the language the signs are written in! Or how those signs are designed. There's also probably a sign somewhere welcoming you to France or Britain that it could read, right? Read GPS, read the local cell towers, read the goddamn sun and stars if you have to! And remember that this is a computer, it can read all of those at once in a fraction of a second. I'd be far more worried about *humans* making that transition than computers.
Many of the other challenges you point out would be handled by alerting the driver and switching to automatic. Most of them aren't specific to Europe (there's mud and road construction here in America too ;). It will probably progress slowly -- over time various transportation departments and local governments will start providing instructions to the automatic cars about how to navigate, and the software developers will look at ways to make it better at handling obstacles. Hell, for some of the construction zone issues they could possibly lay out a trail of QR-codes or special ribbon or something and have the car just follow the line.
I'd say the challenge in Europe is going to be old, narrow roads and simply the ROI of getting the damn thing programmed. Although the roads probably won't be any worse than the dirt roads common in much of the US. Big thing will be that you'll have to hire a ton of lawyers and coders to go through the laws and program them all in, and you'll sell fewer units because Europe actually has functional public transit. So yeah, of course they'll hit America first, then hit Europe after a couple years of Moore's Law brings the costs down far enough. But that's alright, we're happy to beta test these for ya ;)
Keep in mind though that this is not an all-or-nothing thing. They've got cars that can parallel park themselves. They've got cars that help you stay in the lane, or see in the dark. And they've had those for *years* now. I wouldn't be surprised to see a car commercially released *today* that was capable of automatically holding its lane on the highway for those hundred mile drives. After that you get one that can transfer highways too. Then one that can hit the city streets. And finally one that can start to handle construction and other obstacles. The fully self-driving car is many years off in *any* market, but I don't see any reason why Europe would be more than a couple years behind America once we finally get there.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:06PM
It knows where it's going
Not true, it knows the ferry port you went to - it has no idea which ferry you are catching or where it is going to. Ferries from Roscoff go to Spain, Ireland, and the UK. For the UK, it has no idea which of upto 4 ports you could be arriving at. Hell, on some ferries even the passenger cannot guarantee which port it will arrive at, although I will admit this has only happened twice in the last decade or so.
I've tried routing via ferry port outbound and then via ferry port destination but the device throws a complete hissy-fit because it cannot work out how to cross the 100+ miles of water between the two.
Look at what direction the street signs face. Hell in that example, look at the language the signs are written in! Or how those signs are designed. There's also probably a sign somewhere welcoming you to France or Britain that it could read, right
Which will require you to be travelling along roads while the device works out which country you are in? Not a sound plan. The vehicle starts moving below decks on the ferry and the second you leave the ferry - before satnav has obtained a fix, before it has time for triangulating towers and working out where you are - you have to be moving in traffic. By the way, try writing the word 'France' and working out which language it is written in.
I agree that they will be OK for major arterial roads and will be fine in cities, but the technology has some way to go before it will be able to manage in rural areas that don't have the tower infrastructure etc. I don't see anyone offering to invest in that sort of infrastructure at present. As I have said, the companies don't even want to put up telephone towers in rural areas. All of the problems have solutions, but I don't see any money being spent to resolve them. I remember the promise of flying cars by the year 2000 - I'm still waiting to see one in my local garage but I fear I will have long left this world before they are on sale here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:11PM
nuff said.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:31PM
It is called R&D and any company with capital and foresight will perform this to some degree. Innovation comes from the successes, but you still have to look to see what can be done, or no one will do it.
(Score: 1) by Squidious on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:56PM
Driver-less cars will be a boon to your local bar business. No more drinking alone at home. No more worrying about who is going to volunteer to be the sober sap who plays mother to your posse. I imagine they will have to adjust the open container laws to provide an exception for driver-less cars. Oh how I long for the days of carrying a full bar in my trunk, with a sea of empty beer cans sloshing around on the floor of the back seat!
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:13PM
"hello?"
"hi! how may i help you?"
"yes i'm talking to [insert big global shopping chain here]?"
"yes sir. how can i be of service?"
"well i'm all out of: [insert big shopping list here]."
"okay. got it. what's the ETA of your car?"
"let me check ... it says it will be at your outlet at 3:55pm"
"okay. what's the number plate"
" [insert car number plate here]"
"okay we will load it up for you."
...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:35PM
Looking at all the comments, it seems like most of us agree that driver-less cars are a good idea. What about Glass? I kind of like the idea, but it has way too many problems as it is now (social problems and implementation problems).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by Natales on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:40PM
Comparing Glass with Driverless cars is idiotic. They are completely different things.
I, for one, think that Driverless cars will happen sooner rather than later, and not necessarily by Google only, but a number of other companies. But the article miss the mark when they keep thinking abut "owning one". Driverless cars will finally enable CaaS (car as a service) they way it should be. I don't ever need to own one anymore. It's my personal Uber. I take one when I need it and let it go. Heck, how much do you want to bet that Uber and Zipcars will be among the first companies to embrace this model? Deliveries will change, driving under the influence will change, school buses will change, it will affect our society very deeply. It may take longer to implement given all the detractors, luddites, and special interest that may prefer the status quo, but it's inevitable.