Google’s Waze App Is Morphing Into A Low-Cost Congestion Fighter Via Carpool – Forbes (Feb 7, 2017)

Although most of the attention Alphabet gets around cars is around its Waymo division, which is focused on autonomous driving, Google’s Waze group is also doing interesting things around another of the three major shifts happening in transportation: ride sharing and urban mobility. In this case, it’s not so much an Uber- or Lyft-like driver-provided service as a simple carpooling arrangement with a little compensation for the driver, but in that sense it has the potential to be more cost effective, using existing infrastructure to provide lower cost transportation and reducing congestion in the process. Google is building a ride sharing capability much more subtly and quietly than it is autonomous cars, but the former has far grater potential to make a big difference in disrupting traditional transportation in the near term.

via Forbes


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