The Google Car was supposed to disrupt the car industry. Now Waymo is taking on suppliers – Recode (Jan 28, 2017)

This is a subtle shift, but an important one – one that began to become apparent a few weeks back. Alphabet is fundamentally a software, rather than hardware, company (Google’s recent push into first party hardware notwithstanding) – that’s where its skills have always lain, and where it has been able to add the most value both in its own products and in partnering with others. However, in the car space, it’s increasingly clear that Waymo will pair those software skills with developing hardware skills around things like LIDAR, and potentially attempt to sell packages of hardware and software or even complete systems, rather than just providing the software brains that will leverage hardware from other suppliers in cars. There are pros and cons here – on the one hand, Waymo doesn’t yet have great credibility in hardware in cars, and so trying to bundle the two together may threaten its ability to sell its software. On the other hand, it didn’t have much credibility in self-driving software either a few years back, but has earned it over time and now has partnerships with FCA, among others, so perhaps it can win trust in the same way with hardware as it makes progress here.

via Recode


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