Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service | Hacker News Reader

Google Takes on Uber with New Ride-Share Service

wsj.com

596 pointscoloneltcb461 comments

This is not about taking on Uber. Google is testing AI for self driving cars. Once we have self driving cars, the idea is that you deploy these cars and the cars figure out who to pick up and who to drop off and possible doing group pick ups along the way. Waze is going to predict who to pick up based on their collected data thus far using ML, their data scientists are going to supervise it and correct it. Once we have self driving cars, Google will have the tech that can manage assigning cars and picking people up. This is what it is all about.

Exactly what I thought myself after reading the article, it is totally logical (business-wise) to have an established market they can easily capture once their cars gets rolling.

You don't think that's exactly the market Uber has been going for? There's a reason Uber raided CMU for researchers:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carne...

And that reason became pretty obvious when they started testing self-driving cars recently in Pittsburgh:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ubers-driverless-rides-i...

I don't think Uber started out with this plan, but clearly at some point they realized that they had to be a two-stage company like Netflix. Google's doing the same thing, but with a different stage 1.

My bet, though, is that Uber wants to own the market, while Google is going to go after a platform play. I expect it to be sort of like Android. Google will make the software and own important parts of the consumer relationship. But most people who can manufacture cars or otherwise acquire large fleets at low costs will not want to do the software work, so they'll partner with Google.

So yes, in the same way that Android was about taking on Apple in a way that makes decent money and keep Google from getting cut out of an important piece of the tech/human intersection, this is ultimately about taking on Uber.

Google is emphasizing for low prices and people not to make careers from this for one reason, automation. This is a pilot for them, and will be replaced by autonomous cars in a few years. They don't want to be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of jobs and fight that moral fight. Uber is about to have a huge amount of people displaced from the jobs they created, and Google doesn't want to share that reputational hazard imo. Good call for Google.

Love it how Uber is getting Ubered by providing a service they were supposedly providing but it was only a marketing scam to get around Taxi regulation.

This is proper "sharing economy" where the other party isn't doing this to make a living out of it. I wonder who will Airbnb the Airbnb and is that at all possible.

The end will be the same anyways - both companies are competing for a spot on the customers mobile phone so that they could provide a service when autonomous cars are up and running.

I do not like the fragmentation though. I want one app to work everywhere. Uber in China is broken already and no way I could use Didi app.

Also, I do not think that there is any significant network or engineering value in the app itself. If Google or Tesla finally starts delivering self-driving car service for 10x less than Uber, users will flee in a jiffy.

You're overlooking the importance of competition when it comes to things like pricing and innovation.

Didi is very easy. Just type the location, and a cab will turn up within 1-2 minutes.

Given cab drivers make a pittance after the cost of the LPG and insurance, little disruption in the industry other than to share a ride home with a stranger that possibly works in a similar industry and/or similar locations, and smalltalk happens.

Current China eliminating blue collar jobs after they've already been decimated by modernisation over the past 3 decades is pretty unlikely.

>I wonder who will Airbnb the Airbnb and is that at all possible.

I think it's called "couchsurfing".

i dont think the overlap in users there is actually that big.

most of the people i know who couchsurf do so very regularly and travel a lot whereas myself and my general perception of airbnb users is that it ranges from super casual and not frequent to very hardcore and frequent.

i'd figure the overlap would only be at the high end of frequency of travel.

It's taxi regulation that's the scam / cartel... and since when is making a living off something morally wrong?

Capitalism is about disruptive innovation...

He didn't say it is morally wrong.

I've noticed Google Maps will sometimes give me Uber ads when I'm looking up directions ("this route only $N on Uber" or such). Idle speculation but I wonder if this was a mistake for Uber -- perhaps Google has seen a high rate of click-through on these and will now try to get in on that action themselves.

In some places (all, IIRC, outside of the US), the Google Maps ride service feature already supports non-Uber ridesharing services. In the US, I think it only has Uber, but its basically a feature that lets GMaps be a platform for commoditizing ride services.

Nah. In many cities Uber is the only service.

If the GMaps ride service functionality is accessible to other services (it currently is by specific negotiation/partnership only, apparently, so not really, but as a platform that could change), it provides an avenue for weakening Uber's moat and making it easier for competitors to gain traction.

In my city in Spain Uber is not available but GMaps offers rides with Cabify instead, a local alternative. But I think it is negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

I've noticed that too, and wondered about the connection with this.

I wonder if this was a similar play as when they opened that 411 service back in the day. Turned out, they were using it as a way to amass a large collection of voice samples.

I kinda wonder how valuable ride sharing data would be. They might necessarily have to make a profit directly on that. It might have something to do with their self-driving cars. For example (just randomly spouting off), knowing where people want to ride towards the same direction might inform how to deploy a fleet of self-driving taxis.

Route length, duration, complexity, etc. They're collecting baseline and training data for AI cars.

See also fiancé / fiancée

In French, a company (entreprise) is feminine. I don't know the rule of agreement for loanwords, though.

Basically this is different from uber/lyft because it is trying to match you with someone already going to the same area, say on their normal commute. You are not just calling up a driver to get you from place to place.

I can't help but to think of Ford Prefect's Electronic Thumb from H2G2.

If it's as successful as Google+, you'll also be stuck waiting for 15 years.

I was actually just thinking about this the other day- why doesn't a large tech company with lots of cash create a ride service which basically lets the driver keep everything? Uber can't possibly compete. Google can destroy them before they can become a threat in other tech spaces.

Network effect + first mover advantage. It takes a lot of time and money to develop the community if there already are major players.

In this particular case Google would have so spend a shit ton of money on advertising, and it's not guaranteed to work. They failed with Google+.

Google could just add this as a feature in Google Maps.

And they should. But they probably won't any time soon. Google is very conservative about new major changes in Google Maps, and it's a good thing.

So its just a quality of service type thing. However if there were far more incentives for the drivers themselves and you built it in such a way that they could be actively doing service for a competitor while monitoring/taking rides from another.. why not? Many drivers work for both uber and lyft. With the right technical structure you can use Uber's army against them, made easier by the fact that Uber isn't known for really wanting to take care of drivers.

What network effects do you see in Uber?

People telling each other about Uber. Mass media writing about Uber. People working for Uber.

Customers use Uber because there are enough drivers that service tends to be reliable; Drivers use Uber because there are enough customers to sustain a living.

It's the usual marketplace model.

A concurrent could book a Uber ride for their customer using the API when and where they don't have any driver.

Well, I checked the terms of use of Uber API and competing with Uber is forbidden...

I feel like Google failed with Google+ not simply due to being late to the market, but because Google+ was a big paradigm shift from Facebook style social media and it didn't catch on with users. If they had gone with a more conventional solution I think they could have taken a rather large chunk out of Facebook's user base.

Good thing Uber has already done the hard work for them :) Speaking as someone who uses Uber a lot, if another service offered it cheaper I'd jump ship in a heartbeat. I think the same goes for the drivers, who are in many cases already driving for multiple services at the same time.

>Google would have so spend a shit ton of money on advertising

How so? if it's 20% cheaper I doubt it will need much advertising at all.

That is what MS did by giving away IE and they got done for it.

Great news. As a PT worker at one of the articles mentioned companies, I know there is considerable demand for rides to and from the retailer. This could be huge if employees shift from dial-taxis or uber to "co-workers" via waze.

Other night a pizza server at a shop next door said she was very slow. It's summer and nobody buys pizza. She added it costs her $10 one way cab ride and makes nothing for the day.

This is the type of news I would post on employee board when it comes to my area.

I interpreted "pizza server" as a computer that produces pizza and thought about how cool that would be. I guess a pizza server could also be an oven.

Google is not "taking on Uber." An important point is that Google is not making money off the payments for the ride, which presumably all go to the driver.

For the driver that means defraying the cost of a commute in return for going a few minutes out of his way. True ride-sharing, not a gypsy-cabs-plus-reputation network. It's more akin to a transport-specific Splitwise than to Uber.

What Google gets out of this is a real-world model of on demand automated transport patterns, pricing, demand, etc.

It's a good idea, and in Georgia there's a program to pay you to car pool (http://gacommuteoptions.com/Save-Your-Commute/Earn-Cash.-Win...).

I see this as something similar. But I was never able to find someone to car pool with.

Honestly I wish they wouldn't try to compete on price. Maybe I'm alone with this, but I'd rather not feel obligated to tip a driver because the ride is so cheap. Pay them a living wage, let me pay the exact fee, and let me not have to carry goddamn cash like I used to in the era of Taxis.

e: Addressing common replies:

"This is for people commuting already" -- okay, point taken; my point about Uber/Lyft still stands.

"Tipping isn't obligatory" -- yes, it kind of is. Uber used to bar drivers form asking, but they recently lost a lawsuit over that rule and so now Uber drivers will occasionally ask for tips (which will cause it to slowly become the norm). When tipping becomes the norm, the low-base-wage of the driver becomes less of an 'issue', and then tipping becomes even more of a necessity as that is where the drivers will make their actual margins.

FTA: the price is intended to be low enough that one wouldn't try to use this to be a taxi driver. It reminds me of the days when someone offered to chip in for gas in exchange for carpooling.

Disclaimer: I'm a Google employee but have never heard anything about this before.

EDIT: Oh, nevermind.

Keeping up with everything Google is doing is itself a full time job. I barely have time to keep up with all of the gazillion announcements in my own tiny corner of the world that affect my day job, so I'm usually as surprised as anyone when something "big" happens in a different part of the company.

The point of the service is not for people who drive for a living. It is for people already headed in the same direction to carpool. So the benefit of getting paid is just a bonus as long as it isn't far out of the driver's way.

I took an Uber home from the train station last week and it was less than $15. I'm not sure how much a taxi would've been, probably at least $25.

I don't feel good about it. How can someone provide good service if they're taking home so little? I fear that soon Uber will be overrun with poor service because all the quality drivers have been driven out by low costs.

Talk to your drivers about it. So far they've all told me that they get more passengers thanks to the app, and the pay from Uber's base rate outweighs unpredictable tips.

[edit] NYC, and the drivers are pretty candid about still picking up rides from black car dispatchers and competitors. I have no reason to question their honesty.

I think it's worth considering whether those drivers are incentivized to tell you the truth. I can't say either way, but I wouldn't put it past Uber to instill reasons for defensive praise of the service.

I've had some lousy jobs, and it seems like the worse the job is, the less the employees complain. It's a weird form of denial, or something else?

Safeway bucks that observation. Safeway managed to irritate every employee, including my deceased father. He hated that company with a passion. In his late twenties, he became an electrician, and loved the work, and union pay.

All drivers I’ve talked to (mostly in the London area) told me they are very unhappy with their pay, but because Uber is so cheap, they can’t drive for their old cab companies anymore (all business moved to Uber).

Because those old mincab services were TERRIBLE. Calling to book late at night with unknown arrival times and being forced to ask everyone at the party "hey what's the post code here?" wasn't fun. Bye bye Swiss Cottage Minicabs. I've not had a blanket negative from London drivers though. Some complain but most seem "meh" like moving from one job to another.

Yeah, every taxi/minicab company at any city in UK on Saturday night is like "sorry, there's a 2 hour wait" - and even if you do wait, nothing turns up. In the meantime, Uber is always instant, the longest waiting time I've ever seen with Uber was 10 minutes, even on the busiest time on Saturday night.

Not quite any city. Edinburgh taxi service is legendary - typically under 5 minutes wait time. Lord knows how.

I've always assumed it was because the relatively high taxi rates in Edinburgh meant there was plenty supply and it's not hugely difficult to become a taxi driver in Edinburgh (there is a test, but its nothing like the Knowledge in London).

What shocks me is how slowly the taxi companies are responding to the Uber threat. I use Uber when I can and the price has nothing to do with it. It's better cars, better service, and friendlier drivers (usually).

Every time I get in some yellow cab that's a 5 year old Crown Vic with torn seats, rattles everywhere, and a driver that can't (or won't) tell me how much my ride is going to cost, I remember why I normally take Uber.

Feel free to explain how you think a small, regional company that actually has to, you know, turn a profit, is going to compete with a multinational losing billions a year to establish a global monopoly.

They are getting there, although slowly. They've had all the data and infrastructure necessary to get something off the ground for years, but haven't bothered because they've never had to bother.

I've had the exact opposite experience. 90% of my drivers love Uber, and I've taken ~100 rides so far.

Use UberExec or UberBlack instead. Yes, you pay more for the car, but drivers also make substantially more (and are required to be better).

Uber Black is about 2x the price of a taxi in Oakland, and about 4x the price of Uber X. The mininum fare is $15. The wait times are usually 10-15 minutes vs 2-5 minutes for the trip I regularly take.

There might be a case for that service but the drivers are so rare that it's hard to say.

The Uber driver probably made more than the taxi driver would have because they don't have to pay the hefty daily cab rental fees or rent a medallion. It's not like taxi drivers were rolling in cash before Uber came around.

The Uber driver probably made more because Uber is spending VC money to build both sides of its market to achieve a monopoly, from which (once achieved) it can extract rents to pay investors back (at least, that's the plan.)

Uber also subsidizes your ride sometimes. I had a ride that Uber paid the driver about $60 for (we were talking about the economics of the service and this came up), and I paid only $3.

Either you or the Uber driver in question completely made that up. Nobody is paying drivers $60 for $3 rides.

Then people will stop using it and they'll address it. A lot of drivers are part time and use it just to supplement their income.

I wish people cared about exploiting others, but they just don't seem to care, unless exploitation is so appalling it makes them look terrible. Even then--they rationalize, and go into denial.

Care to detail the exploitation in this situation?

What alternatives are there for unskilled laborers?

I'm pretty sure Uber drivers make more than minimum wage (barely) after expenses and it seems like much more comfortable and fun than flipping burgers or working at Walmart.

Taxi drivers used to spend a lot of time just waiting around. Doing less idling means fares can come down as income stays the same or increases.

Last week I took Uber to work and paid only $1.22 for a 10 minute drive. Five minutes later I spent more than that on the toppings of my breakfast..

.. not sure how this is sustainable but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

I think you were misbilled, or someone forgot to turn on the "meter".

That was probably a promotion, check your receipt. Most places in the US UberX minimum fare is $5+ and even without it, I couldn't find any reasonable combination of base fare, time and distance that would come out to $1.22

http://uberestimate.com/prices/

But no, probably not sustainable (for Uber):

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses...

Haven't looked in detail, but I continue to wonder about those outsized losses. Seems they are monopolizing the market using investor dollars to price below cost.

Many taxi services have been their own racket. But I don't view the above as moving to a better, sustainable model -- not at the current prices.

It seems this -- Uber drivers earning more than the profit/cost structure merits -- is a stopgap towards cornering the driverless car livery ("taxi", etc.) services, at which point labor expenses significantly decline and the old-school competition has been severely crippled if not eliminated.

P.S. I'm not a user of Uber -- or Lyft, etc. Suburban car owner. By I don't like market manipulation and monopolization -- good things don't tend to follow. Even as I watch one friend benefit quite significantly -- and essentially -- from the current Uber presence.

For their sake, as well as the larger picture, I wouldn't mind being proven wrong. But I've yet to reach any level of comfort with much of these "sharing" services/businesses.

I don't think it's my problem. The driver freely chose to do this for the pay offered. Why should I second guess that?

Where it gets weird is when people take the taxi instead. This means the Uber driver loses $15, but you don't have to see him...

Already seems like it's happening to some extent. I've noticed the number of questionable vehicles and drivers creep up in the last six months or so.

So little? They got $15 for presumably a 15 min ride? They will probably do several trips just in that hour, and most full time drivers do 25+ trips a day. It adds up.

It's only a matter of time until the cars are completely driverless. Will you feel better knowing that there isn't anybody behind the wheel being taken advantage of, but also no longer has this option to make money for themselves?

I'm not being sarcastic. I honestly don't know how I feel about it either.

I'll take Johnny Cab without guilt. History is littered with jobs that don't exist anymore. Either we'll make more kinds of jobs, or we'll find a way to deal with the fact that we don't need as many workers.

There should never be an obligation to tip. The whole point of tipping is that it's not obligatory. I get that we've messed that up for a lot of professions, like restaurant servers, but Uber et al have a chance to reset the social norms at least around taxi-esque services and they should take it.

If it's not obligatory to tip then it should be obligatory to pay people a living wage, in any context.

Living wage destroys the ability for people to make a little extra on the side with part-time gigs.

Why would that be?

How is that? A part time job would pay a part of a living wage.

You realize that "living wage" is only a price floor for labor, not a price ceiling, right? It is a guarantee that people are paid at a minimum the amount necessary to support themselves, with various definitions excluding or including that person's family situation from consideration.

Instituting a living wage would in no way prevent you from working extra and being paid extra for that work. I'm inclined to believe you haven't actually researched what a living wage is or would entail to enact, because the inaccuracy of the claim you're making is egregious.

Maybe what they meant is that without a wage floor people working for extra cash could take the job for below-living wage rate, outcompeting people who are looking to support themselves fully with the job.

(I don't endorse that point of view, just trying to make sense of their claim.)

That makes more sense, thanks for clarifying. Appreciate it!

I think what the parent is getting at is that by instituting a price floor, you prevent people from providing services whose utility is below the price floor. In other words, if someone wanted to do extra work that wasn't worth much money (but might add up over a longer period of time), they are now unable to do said work because no one will be willing to pay them for it.

Basically, when setting a minimum wage, you end up picking between two groups of labor: those who work for some extra money (think high schoolers and retirees who would like some extra spending money and don't mind doing menial tasks that may not generate much value to earn in) and those who work to live (think unskilled laborers who do laborious work and feel they are insufficiently compensated for it). A lower wage favors the former group because they are able to offer the services for less (and the quantity of labor demanded will increase if the price goes down) while a higher wage favors the latter because they can demand more money.

Got it, didn't realize that was the argument. Thanks much.

I hadn't heard this decision point framed so clearly in terms of the two kinds of labor each side ends up favoring, that's a great example.

I don't know if I'd be so charitable to call my counter-assertion to the assertion I replied to an argument, but the replies to your reply are indeed representatives of the argument chains that lead to the assertion, and I agree they are phrased well, probably better than I would have. More tangentially I'm now wondering how often leaving an assertion that's the obvious output (if you've seen it before anyway) of an idea framework ends up with other people doing the backward chaining algorithm to give an explanation for you...

There are part time tasks that we might want to pay someone to do, but are not worth paying anyone for at living wage costs: The value and the minimum wage don't line up. Those are often the kinds of jobs untrained teenagers did back in the day. If it's illegal to pay someone to do it for a wage I am willing to pay, then it doesn't get done.

It would be nice if it was possible to have a sensible minimum wage for, say, employing someone over 5 hours a week, but have mechanisms that make it legal for someone to do very short term work at wages nobody should ever live on. There's plenty of people underemployed at 15, 20 hours a week, that would love to supplement that with a bit of extra work, even if it was under minimum wage. In fact, in some cultures this happens all the time.

That work would also get done if we had a citizen income that matches that living wage, and we got rid of the minimum wage altogether.

Now, whether the world would be in a better state by leaving work not done but guaranteeing a living wage or by maximizing work done is a matter for debate: Looking at minimum wage laws alone is not enough to compare policy outcomes. Still, the grandparent was making a defensible argument, whether you think he is wrong (and he might be) or not.

That clarifies GP's argument immensely, thank you.

It isn't a guarantee of that when you tie it to an hourly rate. Anyone who isn't delivering enough value after the rate hike is going to have their hours cut and is going to have a harder time finding a second job, which is something a lot of minimum wage workers have to do thanks to overtime pay requirements. I'm not saying this as some upper middle class libertarian either, I was still working these jobs just a couple years ago. A 40 hour or less work week for me would have kept me in that position nearly indefinitely. Yet raising the minimum wage much higher than it is now would price the people who are most in need of employment out of the labor market. I know you're probably likely to cite recent wage hikes in certain cities as evidence that this isn't the case, but those are areas where a dollar has a much lower purchasing power than it does in most of the country. A national minimum wage of $12 an hour would have made a huge number of the people I'd worked with at a minimum wage job a liability rather than an asset.

Living wage is not defined in terms of absolute money made from a job. Its defined in such that if you are spending your time working for something, it should be at least enough to survive off if you did it 40 hours a week.

Right, but a living hourly wage requirement that applies universally without exceptions prevents someone with a full-time job that pays a living wage (or perhaps much more than that) from doing side jobs that have a price which would provide mutual benefit to both them and the person paying for them, but only do so at a wage below what would, on its own, be a living wage.

This is a real issue (and it applies to regular old minimum wages even they aren't living wages); its among the arguments for why Basic Income would be a better minimum-quality-of-life support than minimum wage guarantees for the working plus welfare for the nonworking, since it doesn't stop any mutually-beneficial work from being done merely because the market clearing price is below an artificial threshold.

OTOH, even people who recognize that the restriction on some work that it implies is a problem think its a cost worth paying for a living wage guarantee given that its harder to get support for (and, arguably, beyond the level of the economy now to support) a Basic Income at a sufficient level in the near term.

The term itself is sort of ridiculous as well, since most advocates for it want a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is nearly twice what I lived on for quite a while, and is far above the median purchasing power amongst all people. And to be blunt, most of the people I worked with for less than $8 an hour were barely worth what they were being payed then. At $15 an hour there is just no way they would be able to find enough employment

Yeah I could take issue with the term too. At least with minimum wage (which has the same issues wrt a price floor, like many forms of work not being worth the minimum $x/hr the law requires) it's the same at the city/state/federal level you live in so you can properly account for it, and in the ideal case is enough to "live" on so proponents are happy. "Living wage" is inherently more subjective. I can live almost anywhere in the US at that place's minimum wage or less -- if I live like a college student, or a bit worse. It's not enough to support a family on. But too often a living wage gets set at some high price it takes to rent a studio apartment alone in your area and eat out every night, and maybe even support a child. It's just a nebulous term.

I live in the Seattle area where $15/hr is the minimum wage now for the city proper. Sure certain businesses still have another year or two to implement it, and other businesses another 5 or so years, but I'm looking forward to seeing the results over time and how well they match various parties' predictions when the law was passed.

I think the USSR tried a living wage. After 80 years of a living wage they had to line up every morning for their stipend of a loaf of Bread and a Bar of Soap.

While I believe people should be paid fairly, it would be difficult to implement and carry out successfully as history has proven.

I believe you're conflating 'living-wage' with communism. Those are pretty different animals.

Russian people were dirt poor because the USSR spent a majority of their economic fruits to subsidize strategic communist allies in order to keep them loyal. A lot of the other communist bloc countries were pretty well off until this subsidy stopped.

Adults should be capable of deciding for themselves if a given wage is sufficient to meet their expenses.

We need to tip in America because the prevalent attitude here is "I don't get paid enough for this shit." It's not so much about paying people a living wage, as much as changing the way people view their jobs and obligations.

Everyone wants to change the world, but how many people will actually pick up a stray piece of trash and throw it in a bin?

If only that were remotely true.

In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws.

EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then).

(Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.)

You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

I waited tables a decade ago. If I recall correctly, it was $2.95 + tips and I believe with a 4% tip-out. So your 15% tip became 11% real quick. So I hustled.

I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor.

Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.

> What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping.

Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.

Because customer service is draining. Because even when you get paid $75k, dealing with assholes still sucks.

I'm gonna hand wave some more: most Americans when they think of good service beyond just being quick on delivery. Good service is about having a friendly conversation and building rapport with another person. It's may be weird for those of us with introverted tendencies, but this is Middle America with big smiling teeth.

Now.. by giving me an immediate incentive (tip) to smile through a bad customer's rudeness (or even harassment--please don't ever hit on people paid to serve you, ever), I'll continue to smile and pour on that syrupy niceness even when I just want to tell a person that they're an asshole and never have to deal with them again.

Personally, I have absolute no problem with tipping, or paying higher prices to pay restaurant workers a better wage, but I think people who are pushing no-tip don't understand the complexities in place.

In the restaurant world, at the end of each night, you'd get a huge wad of cash, and you felt you had worked for it (even though it can be argued people tip consistently). So even though the carrot may not be real, it still convinced people to act a certain way.

Now take away that carrot, take away the cash. You just have better paid McDonald's workers.

I disagree completely. For one thing, many McDs employees in countries with a higher minimum wage also have a better attitude, but there are also standout employees at McDs in the U.S. The issue isn't just that the workers at higher minimum wage places are paid more, it's that they are better employees because the managers there can't afford to hire a mediocre one (especially since it's harder to fire them), so they get good employees and train them. And the instances where I've had really good service from McDs in the U.S. are often cases where there's an economic downturn and you have alot of overqualified people taking that job as it's better than nothing.

Service in any restaurant is more a function of the kinds of employees you can attract (through wages) and the amount of training the manager puts into their staff. Tipping is only important in that it allows some restaurants to pay a fairly decent amount of money to attract higher quality workers for only a couple of nights when a straight wage would require a larger time commitment to get the same amount of money. However, a (necessarily higher) straight wage would also allow more workers the opportunity to make a decent full time living as a waiter or bartender, which means you could have really good servers even on less busy nights of the week, but fewer servers on the busiest nights as there's less flexibility in hiring and firing.

Sorry but I worked in a variety of non tipped customer service jobs and I was always polite even when abused because that was my job. If I didn't do my job I would lose my job. It's really not all that draining either. I can't imagine requiring bribes, oh sorry, tips, to do my job.

The biggest difference in customer service in all the establishments I've worked in was management. Training is extremely important and can't be winged, there has to be a procedure in place. Having the highest expectations of your employees and component staffing are a must. And don't be scared to fire anyone who is not meeting your standards.

Poor customer service is mostly a result of poor management. Good customer service is a result of good management.

Anyway over friendly servers make me very, very uncomfortable. I went out for food with my companions not for a social experience with a stranger.

>smile through a bad customer's rudeness

Being nice to assholes isn't something I consider necessary for good service. If anything it's bad service for all the other polite customers who have to listen to their bullshit.

Aussie currently living in NYC: Rarely tipped back home and the service is on par.

There's no reason why it can't work differently, as mentioned elsewhere, but it would require alot of change in the way these businesses are ran in the U.S. and there's not that much incentive. Most likely the end result would be the same as far as service goes.

From having lived in both the U.S. and Australia, my feeling isn't so much that tipping is the reason why the service is better. I've had excellent service in some places in Australia and lousy service in places in the U.S. My feeling is that the management makes a point of emphasizing customer service more in the U.S. than in other places (even in businesses that don't have tips), and this is true across the board. Increased competition in the U.S. is some of it, and just plain cultural attitude is alot.

Service is Europe is not poor. Not by a long shot.

When talking about service you have to consider cultural differences too. I'm american, in the country that I studied abroad in the service expectations were different from cashiers than American cashiers and neither are tipped.

I also would prefer to have much less fake friendliness.

Not sure why you'd accept that very long. I'll tell you how it works here (swe): Most of restaurant employees in the city are organized. There are no minimum wages, instead the union and the corresponding employee organization agree on a minimum compensation. A restaurant that doesn't want to follow the agreement will risk being blockaded by both this Union and any other union that symphathizes, for example their trash won't be picked up. The salaries for restaurant staff are still among the lowest at $3k/month, but still it's 80% of a police or nurse salary.

This might sound like the Union runs an extortion scheme, but interestingly the employers organizations are supportive as it means a lot less regulation and more flexibility. The result of this model is a pretty flat structure in comp: a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.

> a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.

Why shouldn't it?

Not saying it shouldn't, but it should because qualified work can be paid more not because unqualified work can be paid less. Having an organized workforce that says "the minimum cost for full time work of any kind is a living wage" flattens it.

Why should it?

That's because Sweden uses Unions effectively, and no, it's not extortion.

Working class support for unions in the U.S. has been steadily declining for decades and sits around 50% today.

Do you feel like the unsupported assertion that employers do not obey the law helps to bolster your point? If so, is it because you feel facts are subordinate to emotional resonance?

There's plenty of support for this assertion. If you spend a few moments, you can find it quite easily.

I included that point because there are a lot of foreign readers of HN who may not realize how widely flouted our labor laws are here in the US.

as a practical matter, i don't believe it's possible to have "optional" tipping that doesn't create obligation (even if that would be desirable).

either you create a cultural norm where tipping isn't allowed or expected, which Uber has effectively done, or you have a situation like restaurants, where the tip may as well be part of the price, unless you're cool being the asshole who doesn't tip, which most people aren't.

if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states, and short of massive cultural changes i don't see that changing.

> if tipping is an option, through a kind of cultural game-theoretic pressure, the situation will always devolve into the restaurant norm. at least that's how it is in the states

In the UK tipping in restaurants is optional and, while it sounds really weird to say this, I don't think the waiters and waitresses seem to care either way. I don't get a different reaction from them if I tip or if I don't. They don't seem elated if I tip a lot or disappointed if I tip a little. Nobody seems to care and this situation seems stable as it's been this way as long as I've been an adult.

I think it is because they aren't getting paid $2.13/hr like servers in the USA are.

But this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn't it? You could just as easily argue that the wages are so low because tipping is pretty much a given.

It's actually enshrined into law - restaurants are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because of tipping.

It's a perversion of the whole norm, since it effectively turns tipping into a subsidy to the restaurant owner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...

As your link says, they are not allowed to pay less than minimum wage. They are allowed to set hourly wages for tipped employees lower than minimum wage, but they have to ensure that the total compensation of the employee averages out to minimum wage.

Realistically, if the restaurant owner has to contribute anything beyond their hourly rate to the paycheck of the server, that server will be fired (or the business is so slow that it will go under soon).

My experience as a server was a lot of < $1 paystubs after taxes on tips.

Not necessarily. I briefly worked at a 24x7 roadside place where tipped employees would occasionally fall under minimum wage due to slow periods or customers who would either stiff the waitress or tip out $0.35 on an egg, toast, coffee which cost $2.65.

That place systematically robbed those staff by refusing to pay minimum wage and falsifying records and withholding taxes based in nonexistent tips. The Labor department fined then pretty heavily -- but that isn't an uncommon practice.

I'm not sure how this contradicts what I said. Your experience showed that the business was not contributing anymore to your paycheck than the normal wage. Had they not been breaking the law, they probably would have fired someone due to the "extra" expense.

Exactly - so any tip just reduces how much the owner has to pay to cover minimum wage, making it a subsidy to them, not to the server, who gets minimum wage either way.

It's not really a subsidy though, it's just a complication of the payment.

It could be a subsidy if it wasn't an established custom to tip, but people know quite well that they are paying the server a tip for the service.

I suppose the fact that it enables the restaurant to under-report wages and thus under-pay wage taxes is a bit of a subsidy (but then some of that savings probably shows up for the customer).

It is a subsidy, because the server gets the same, it's the restaurant that pockets the difference.

Say the server works 40h/week like a regular full-time worker, so the minimum take-home pay under federal law is $15000. If the server gets $0 in tips, the restaurant must pay the $15000. But if the server gets, say, $5000 in tips, the restaurant can pay only $10000.

The server gets the same money, only the restaurant gets to save some.

Right. In practice, servers get $15000+ in tips. So there usually isn't a subsidy.

It also has a non zero impact on the menu prices (they would go up if tipping wasn't expected)

Seattle recently passed $15 minimum wage and now a lot of restaurants are charging a "service fee" and putting up signs that discourage you from tipping. A much better system imo.

Washington State specifically doesn't allow tipped employees to be paid a lower hourly wage!

What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though? Why not incorporate it into your meal, since it's non-optional.

I noticed they did this in Singapore. You'd be charged a service fee on top of your bill, I can't remember if they popped tax on top of that too. If it's non-optional, it should be included in the cost.

>What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though?

For the same reason airlines don't include mandatory charges in their fares - humans are not particularly good at rational pricing evaluation.

It's known as partition pricing and generally results in higher revenues - from "The Effects on Perceived Restaurant Expensiveness of Tipping and Its Alternatives": [1]

"Furthermore, participants ordered more expensive meals when automatic gratuities were added to the bill than when the costs of service were built into menu prices"

[1] http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

Because if you raise menu prices by 20% customers will balk. Maybe eventually when people are used to the new system that will happen.

The differential between server minimum wage and regular minimum wage used to be much lower, but the regular minimum wage keeps getting adjusted up due to inflation &c.

In Poland a common wage per hour for a server is 5 pln(low end) - 10 pln(high end)/hour = 1.28/2.56 USD. Tipping is just weird, full stop.

> Tipping is just weird, full stop.

How does this conclusion follow from your previous statement?

Servers are actually never paid that wage. If a server's tips do not elevate them above the standard minimum wage, the restaurant is required to compensate them at the standard minimum wage. This was at least the law when I worked in the service industry.

Yes, very true.

The fact really is in the USA if we eliminated tipping, the cost of the food on the menu would just go up by $X number of dollars, and people don't want that, they want low prices for the items on the menu which is why the system also is the way it is.

I don't believe you. No one I know likes tipping. It's awkward no matter how you slice it. We would all much rather just pay what it costs and not have to tip.

Looked it up. You were right. Well, at least in the pay structure. 85% of surveyed people prefer a tipping pay structure to including it in the price of food.

I think it has to do with the perceived idea that tipping leaves the diner in control and leaves the ability to punish a bad waiter. Maybe I'm wrong about that too.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/2013/04/18/tipping-in-rest...

There was a freakonomics episode on this. People believe they have control, but it turns out that , even if the amount people tip differs per person, people basically never change how much they tip.

No job wherein the customer directly employs you should give customers direct control of employees wages. Can you imagine the custom applied across the board.

I'm sorry doctor that appendectomy scar is a bit to big for my liking I'm only tipping you $180.

Honestly, this would greatly improve medical service in the US. Unfortunately, for sums this big there would be too many people willing to be dicks even when the service was good, so the system wouldn't work for that reason.

I don't think people (as least zero of the people I associate with) have any problem with tipping in the United States - it's just so understood it's what you do when in a restaurant, that the only question is usually one of "(A) I'm Lazy, don't want to calculate, 20% tip, (B) I'm being anal, figure out exact 18.5% tip, (C) Got poor service, 15% tip, (D) Waiter spit in my food and was really obnoxious/rude to me - 10% tip (but be prepared for further hostility when you do this)."

After doing this for enough years, it becomes a background task that you don't even really think of, no awkwardness.

> Waiter spit in my food and was really obnoxious/rude to me - 10% tip

It is absolutely insane to me that you would tip anything at all in that case. US tipping culture is crazy.

In what situation would you give 0% tip?

I have never given a 0% tip in the United States. If the service is that bad, get the manager, have them fired - but as long as they are working, they should be paid. Not tipping is equivalent to asking someone to work without salary. Tipping 10% is pretty damn aggressive, and the few times that I've done it, it's certainly gotten a reaction.

What people have to understand, is that a "Tip" in the United States for a server == Salary, not some nice additional money. It's how they pay their rent/buy their groceries/feed their children.

How, exactly, does not tipping result in someone not being paid. A bit hyperbolic.

Not hyperbolic at all. If you read through this thread, the "salary" they are paid assumes that they are making money through tips. It doesn't get adjusted if they are tipped less.

What? They are paid the standard minimum wage if they aren't tipped. It's actually the opposite of what you're saying. Their hourly pay from their employer DOES get adjusted when they are tipped below a rate which satisfies the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

That presumes first class (or at least credible) payroll management, which, while there are probably instances of in the Restaurant Industry, is less common than one might hope. In practice, waitresses are paid their minimum server wage and are then on their own to scrounge up tips to make up the difference. For each case where we can find where a restaurant actually made up the difference in missing tips, we will likely also find several examples of where it doesn't happen.

And, while that "$7.25/hour" is OK in some place like Terre Haute, Indiana, It's destitute poverty in a lot of cities, so the societally agreed convention is that in order to live/pay groceries/utilities/bus-fare/etc... tips are essential.

It's reasonable to assume that when a serving person in the United Stated doesn't receive a tip of 18-20%, then that money is resulting in a reduction of expected baseline salary.

It's very uncommon, but if the server is outright hostile I'd give 0% no problem. It's only happened a few times in my entire life, though.

I've only ever left 0% tip once. It was because I had to repeatedly get up from the table to find the server, first to order, then to get the check, possibly another time when I needed something and they never came back to check after the food was delivered.

This is the case in every country I have ever been. If you read a travel guide for any country it might say that tips are usually given to taxi drivers, restaurant staff etc, but only in the US has zero tipping almost become equivalent to not paying the tab in full.

Also, when I go to the US with 5-10 year intervals the norms for tipping seem to have always crept upwards.

It's pretty much 20% here it seems.

Then they raised the minimum wage. So restaurants added a 20% service fee on to cover it. Okay, fine. That's actually the outcome I wanted.

Except some places left the tip line. So now people still tip out of obligation.

Never ends.

I'm curious where people stand on the "To Insure Proper Service" backronym? I've always bucked back on that by saying "Well, taking some sense of pride in your work, even if that work is bringing people their food and are enjoying the experience of your establishment should insure proper service, otherwise why not work elsewhere?" but I'm not sure that's a very charitable stance to take so I've been wondering what others think as a means of evolving my position a bit?

It sounds like a pretty stupid backronym to me.

On the other hand, if you know beforehand that you are expected to compensate the service staff outside of the bill from the establishment, you should factor in your comfort level with that arrangement before you order, not act like it is some obscure thing you'd never heard of being done.

I'm against that backronym only because it would properly be "ensure", not "insure".

I find the poor spelling offensive

> only in the US has zero tipping almost become equivalent to not paying the tab in full.

Canada is the same way, do not tip 0% in Canada unless the waiter was abjectly rude or spilled something on you.

I find it strange that the same tipping norms exist in Canada as in the US, since, if I'm not mistaken, Canadian waitstaff are paid at least minimum wage. In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.

In BC, at least, liquor servers have a lower minimum wage than the norm, as they're "expected" to make up the difference with tips.

Unfortunately, you are mistaken. Minimum wage for tipping jobs is much less than normal, in all of the 4 provinces I've lived in (AB, SK, ON, QC).

Am I misunderstanding something? Alberta Labour lists this:

* General hourly minimum wage – $11.20 for most employees

* An hourly minimum wage of $10.70 for employees serving liquor as part of their regular job

https://work.alberta.ca/employment-standards/minimum-wage.ht...

> In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.

Waiters always earn minimum wage in the US regardless of what tips they get. A waiter who earns $0 in tips must still be paid minimum wage by the restaurant that employs them.

See the Fair Labor Standards Act per the United States Department of Labor: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm

By "less than minimum wage", the poster was referring to tipped wage - this is the lower, $2.13 per hour federal minimum which can be paid out to employees who make at least $30 per month in tips.

Since it is expected that tips make up the difference between the tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage, yes, tipped employees are actually paid less by their employers than regular minimum wage in the vast majority of cases. This is a large part of why tipping remains in practice - tips effectively subsidize the employer's payroll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...

A waiter who earns $0 in tips is likely an awful waiter and won't remain employed long. His employer does not want to have to make up the difference on a regular basis.

I'm not entirely sure if I understood your first paragraph, but it seems like you might have overlooked this quote from the page I linked:

> If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages [...] do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.

In other words, the employer always needs to pay federal hourly minimum age. Paying a waiter less than minimum wage would be breaking the law regardless of what tips they get.

> tipped employees are actually paid less by their employers than regular minimum wage in the vast majority of cases

Edit: OK, I think I understand what you mean. I agree that because most waitstaff receive tips, the amount their employers pay can be less than minimum wage. However the amount that the waitstaff receive is always at least minimum wage.

In some parts of the US following labor laws is less prevalent than others. In many places the employer will simply ignore the law knowing they will face no consequences. Please see the south.

> In the US, the fact that waiters are paid less than minimum wage and expected to make it up on tips is often cited to explain why it is so bad to not tip at all.

Where in the world did you hear that?

Can't speak for the OP but: everywhere?

The federal minimum wage for a food server in the US is $2.13/hr. The employer only has to pay more if their tips don't average out to $7.25 an hour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_St...

Right, so even if they don't receive any tips they get paid minimum wage. It's a bit disingenuous to suggest they make less than minimum wage if they receive no tips.

In theory this is so but in reality you will be fired if you require the employer to do this.

> but only in the US has zero tipping almost become equivalent to not paying the tab in full.

Tipping in restaurants and taxis is kind of expected in Romania, too (more exactly the capital, Bucharest). Granted, the taxi fares are ridiculously low, so even with a 15-20% tip the price only starts approaching a "normal" level. Restaurants' tips are more like 10%. I also tip my barber/hairdresser, but that's because he does a really good job.

that's pretty interesting. any theories on the underlying cultural differences that explain it, or just different established customs?

all the (many) wait-people here in the states i've known really dislike it, and it's generally considered either clueless, rude, or stingy not to tip at least 15%.

i'm curious about things like:

1. if you go out with your friends to the pub, and don't tip on your bill, are you friends giving you shit about it or otherwise commenting or silently judging?

2. if you were on a date, would she notice and judge if you tipped poorly? (i know many women for whom it would be an instant deal-breaker here, essentially a social signal of many other undesirable traits)

You don't tip in a pub, and you don't have a bill either as you pay for each round of drinks as you get them.

I don't know how your date would be able to know how much you tipped, because you'd normally pay using a chip-and-pin credit card so you don't need to put any money on the table or write anything down.

In Australia, no one would expect you to tip at a pub. Depending on how long you stayed there, you might open a tab, but usually people pay by round. With something like Paywave, paying small amounts is trivial.

On a date at a restaurant, they probably wouldn't care. Waitstaff don't really react differently whether you tip or not.

The "cultural difference" in Australia is that servers, etc. are actually paid the same (fairly high by U.S. standards) minimum wage or above for experience bartenders. So tipping just seems kind of dumb in most cases. The bill is the bill and you pay it and move on with your night.

I think there are many reasons why it persists in the U.S. On the server end, it makes it easier for a casual employee to make a reasonable amount for a couple of nights work and you would make much less if you were straight hourly. It also allows service industry employers to "staff up" on those busy nights and not have to worry about keeping too many on the rest of the week. While customers get to do some social signalling, I think that's mostly adjacent to the server and owner's pay scheme.

If the U.S. moved away from tipping, they would need to pay a higher minimum wage, keep fewer casual employees that only work 2-3 nights a week, and the regulars would be either full-time or half-time which means the busy nights would have fewer servers, though maybe more experienced so nearly as productive for the ones that work it as a full time job.

Why would they have less staff on busy nights? How does wage tie into the obligation of giving employees more hours?

Where do you live? I've lived in the south east since I was young and people definitely expect to tip/be tipped 10%. It's not as strong as America but definitely odd not to.

Hmm that's not my experience. Sometimes the card machine doesn't even give an option to tip, so you can't always do it even when you want to.

Optional only in so much that you will find 'Service is included' on your bill, at least in London it's common practice.

Its quite possible this is because their employer keeps the tips. I generally pay the bill by card but tip in cash for that reason.

That's a US-centric weird custom. Not the case in many other countries. I some places (Japan, some South Pacific Islands) tipping is often considered downright rude.

Also try getting Scottish people to tip with game theory and see how that turns out..

I guess you haven't lived anywhere else in the world other than the US then... Because tipping is completely optional everywhere except the US (and Canada). Even the US has only done it this way for about 100 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12tipping-t.html?...

The ultimate problem with tipping restaurant service workers is that servers are legally allowed to be paid sub-minimum wage. The restaurant offloads their obligation to pay their employees onto the customer, and if the customer doesn't tip then the server will not be paid anything for the work. Under these conditions, customers have a moral obligation to tip servers, but that doesn't mean the system isn't a mess. Servers get no benefits, back staff get no tips, but servers get cash and the opportunity to underreport their tax burden.

That is not true at all. Read the law. In a situation where a server's tips do not boost their hourly wage to the federal minimum wage, the employer is obligated to compensate them up to that level. So in a situation where, say, a server was never tipped, the employer would have to pay them $7.25 an hour just like any other food service worker who makes minimum wage.

This really only works if people know about it. If they don't, they won't complain when they're making below minimum wage.

As if managers never break the law. Plenty of managers pool the tips and take their cut from the pool. Illegal? Sure. What can anyone do about it? Only quit.

Quit and report the manager to the labor board. There are whole government departments, federally and in each state, dedicated to prosecuting people who do things like this. If people stop letting them get away with it, they'll stop doing it.

Accusations are easy. Proof is difficult.

At least in India, tipping isn't that bad. We have Uber drivers who are OK to let go a couple of bucks for lack of change.

Every driver I've asked has said they make more with Uber than they did as a taxi driver. I don't know if it's a decent wage, but it's more than they were getting.

Anything as long as it is not exploitative (I personally have no concerns over this regarding Uber but I certainly include it as a criterion) and does not involve tipping. Tipping is described as an opportunity to "reward excellent service" but in reality it satisfies the parts of the brain that respond to being given the opportunity to temporarily act as a financial master over other human beings.

"Living wage"? Are you suggesting that uber and other drivers are all dead?

(I know "living wage" is the hip buzzword, but it is a poor phrase, is hyperbolic, and creates a false picture that when these workers finish their shift they are going to go find some secluded gutter to die in from malnutrition)

No it doesn't.

Frankly, I think that was the intention of the person who coined the term "living wage". But that's perfectly fine. It's like saying "pro-life" instead of saying "anti-choice". Use whatever phrase helps you get your message across.

I'm not in the habit of saying "living wage," but if I wanted to say, "a person can't live on 5 dollars an hour" in a pithy manner, that's what I'd say. A literal-minded person might get annoyed at that, but most people understand that it's an ethical statement, not a literal one.

Many workers not making a living wage receive some form of government assistance, so saying that they aren't all dying in a gutter seems beside the point.

And the point of forcing employers to pay a living wage is so that we don't have to subsidize their businesses via government assistance to their workers.

Well, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it's the entire point, but it is definitely a compelling reason.

Whether there are good intentions(1) or not, the inevitable consequence of a "living wage", minimum wage, or whatever you call it, is unemployment among the least skilled--typically minorities and youth.

(1) There is plenty of evidence that unions pushing for increases in minimum wage is anything but good intentions and is a desire to boost the demand for union labor. This is especially evident by the fact that in many cases the increase in the minimum wage specifically excludes labor unions.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

> Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.

> Not true: In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders urging a minimum wage increase, more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, "In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."

The "academic literature" purporting that the minimum wage has no affect on unemployment has deep flaws and has all been disproven. If not so, why not raise the minimum wage to $100 an hour? If it has no affect on unemployment, lets stop pussyfooting around and lets eradicate poverty, right?

The literature I've seen does not purport that no conceivable change in the minimum wage would have any effect on unemployment levels.

It instead concludes that changes within certain specified ranges have not, and should not be expected to, have significant effects on unemployment. (And, much of that academic literature reaching those conclusions is pointing to the actual results refuting earlier models which projected stronger responses.)

>The literature I've seen does not purport that no conceivable change in the minimum wage would have any effect on unemployment levels.

That alone demonstrates the answer in the above linked DOL "mythbusters" to be false, or at least deliberately misleading. Let's break down their response:

>with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers

They point to past increases in minimum wage which, according to their selected studies, had "little or no" impact on unemployment, but never has any past increase tried to more than double the minimum wage as some strive to do today. The DOL's answer does not address the question posed.

Regarding the aforementioned studies, even if we take their conclusions to be accurate (which I do not--their methodology is deeply flawed), using them to justify today's "fight for 15" is comparing apples to oranges.

> but never has any past increase tried to more than double the minimum wage as some strive to do today.

That's true, but not by a large margin; the biggest %age one-time increase in the federal minimum wage in the past was 87.5%, a one-step increase to $15 now would be just under 107%.

> Regarding the aforementioned studies, even if we take their conclusions to be accurate (which I do not--their methodology is deeply flawed), using them to justify today's "fight for 15" is comparing apples to oranges.

Show me an alternative model you'd prefer to use to reject the "fight for $15" that wasn't rejected by the actual results of minimum wage increases in the last several decades and we can talk.

Otherwise, all I can see is you rejecting all evidence, but still having no actual basis in fact or justifiable theory for the concern you are raising.

Somehow I feel "ancap" may be ideologically motivated.

>Show me an alternative model you'd prefer to use to reject the "fight for $15" that wasn't rejected by the actual results of minimum wage increases in the last several decades and we can talk.

Tell me which study you want to discuss and/or which methodology is being used and I will tell you where it falls short.

If you're not making a living wage and you're not getting some form of welfare, then... yeah? I mean you might live as a homeless person for quite a while if you make enough for food but not rent.

There are all sorts of living arrangements which don't include welfare, that are affordable and attainable for most everyone. That being said, if housing is not affordable for 99.999% of the population the most glaring culprit is not employers, but local government leaders who prevent the construction of affordable housing.

A hip buzzword from the 1930s, or earlier?

"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."

— President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

Being old does not preclude it from being a hip buzzword. At any rate, even if that wasn't the best adjective for it, the term "living wage" was just as nonsensical in 1933 as it is today.

> Honestly I wish they wouldn't try to compete on price.

Waze Carpool is more targeted at actual ridesharing (and designed specifically to support to/from work carpooling), not a taxi service using "ridesharing" as a misleading name.

Its not really trying to compete with price as it is offering a slightly different service (its kind of like UberPOOL, except its really focusing on -- though not strictly limited to -- the case where the driver is also one of the passengers with a need to go to the destination, or from the source, or, ideally, approximately both.)

Uber has Uber Pool for the exact same purpose.

Not exactly. Uberpool drivers still don't want to actually go to the destination the customer does. Google's offer appears to be trying to coordinate cars of people who are all trying to get somewhere.

That might circumvent some of the legal issues Uber has had, a lot of cities have ride-share programs.

They are circumventing the legal issues by limiting to 54 cents per mile, which is the IRS standard mileage rate: https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/2016-standard-mileage-rates.... That is, at this rate it's just considered a reimbursement for gas/wear and tear on the vehicle, not actual income for services provided.

No, it isn't because the driver still makes a profit with Uber Pool and they didn't intend to travel where they're going.

In Germany for example ride sharing under the legal definition requires that the driver doesn't make any profit and really just takes people along. If that's the case, you don't require additional/different insurance etc.

If passengers cover your costs then you always make profit indirectly - by gaining experience carrying people and being more experienced driver in general.

Right and after work the drivers and artists that work for exposure get food from the supermarket without paying because the supermarket gets exposure by them shopping there.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Driver with that experience could more easily find a job in the field.

Oh, yes I'm sure there is vast hierarchy to climb from junior, to senior up to rockstar ninja guru taxi driver.

A driving license will be more than sufficient for any driving job and if it isn't, you're applying for a job like truck, stunt or test driver that requires additional training anyway.

For a minimum wage probably you're right. But if potential employer had to choose between someone with experience and someone without, who is he going to choose even if said qualifications are just a "driving license"?

Waze Carpool is fantastic... for the 0.26% of the US that lives in the Bay area.

Isn't this just a starter?

Sure, but it's being used as an example of something that exists, which for the vast, vast majority of the US, doesn't.

My mistake here was forgetting the echo chamber that is HN. There is a world outside SV, but it doesn't really matter.

People on HN are interesting in things that affect their lives. Curse them! I mean, really, come on.

There are hackers outside SV/Bay area, which apparently don't count.

The Bay Area is about 2.24% of US population, not 0.26%.

If you've had a nice ride than it makes sense to tip but no one should feel pressured out of obligation.

Just rate the guy extra well. Tip him with publicity so he gets more business.

For the past six or eight months, I've tipped every Uber driver. Not out of a sense of obligation though, but because he or she took great care of me.

I find it odd to tip for professions where they earn decently; restaurant waiters don't earn much (they earn 'restaurant minimums' or even under the table) and rely on tips.

Uber and Lyft drivers earn decently ($20/hr+ in the bay area, $30/hr+ in NYC), and I wouldn't consider tipping them if I was earning similarly/less than they are. OTOH, if you're a high earner and paying a tip doesn't make a difference to you financially (but does to someone else), then you should do it!

    $20/hr+ in the bay area, $30/hr+ in NYC

Neither of which makes for a "decent" living, particularly if you correct that for wear & tear.

The driver here is not supposed to be getting a livable wage, because the driver should be headed to their full time job that will provide them with a livable wage... the fee here (Google isn't even taking a cut) would be to create a minor incentive and make up for gas/wear-and-tear.

They want to stay below the IRS caps on cost reimbursement for drivers (https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/standard-...). If drivers make more than that, they would have to carry special insurance and maybe be vetted.

That page doesn't seem to mention caps and I've never heard of such a thing. Do you have any more information on that?

Ridesharing law is a bit of a gray area, but I was looking into it a couple years ago, and it seemed to be a dominant interpretation that the IRS limit was determining for whether something could be considered true ridesharing and not subject to regulations that companies like Uber have to deal with. There is a company called Carma that was operating under that cap at the time (but I just checked their site, and they seem to have changed their model to a subscription thing). Here is one link I found in five minutes of googling that mentions using the IRS cap: http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M042/K158/4... There are better sources, but I don't have them handy.

OK, here is a better link suggesting that the 54 cent/mile rate mentioned by the WSJ article isn't just about undercutting Uber but also about avoiding legal problems. http://kxan.com/2014/02/25/ride-sharing-app-gets-green-light...

From the article:

"Heyride, a ride-sharing program, was forced to shut down operations in the city because drivers did not have permits, the Austin Transportation Department said. The city says when drivers can set their own rates and earn a profit, that’s when they’re treated like taxi cabs.

“It’s not friends taking friends, it’s the money being exchanged, the compensation,” said Steve Grassfield, with The Austin Transportation Department.

With Carma Carpool, riders pay 20 cents per mile and drivers earn 17 cents per mile to pay for gas and car maintenance. Federal regulations say drivers who earn anything less than 56 cents per mile are not considered vehicles-for-hire."

    "Tipping isn't obligatory" -- yes, it kind of is. Uber used to bar drivers
    form asking, but they recently lost a lawsuit over that rule and so now Uber
    drivers will occasionally ask for tips (which will cause it to slowly become
    the norm).

I'm pretty sure I was recently given a low rating by a driver on Uber because I didn't tip. From my perspective the ride went perfectly fine, and I wasn't even asked for a tip, but I checked my rating later and it went down from the perfect 5.0 I used to have.

If this becomes the norm, tipping will become mandatory because all the drivers will know who tips and who doesn't and will adjust service (or lack of service) accordingly.

Drivers rate passengers? Where can I see my rating?

https://help.uber.com/h/e9302f73-8625-427f-abf7-dbe7ab25af7d

> yes, it kind of is.

No it's not, and you're ruining things by tipping.

I hate tipping.

Tipping is in my mind toxic to long term growth of ride sharing. It makes the user have to think, it's just bad UX.

> "Tipping isn't obligatory" -- yes, it kind of is.

No, it really isn't. I've never been asked by an Uber driver for a tip, nor would I give a tip if asked. In fact, I'd probably dock a point from their rating.

Put the onus back on the company to pay an honest wage, and let everybody pay the same price for a ride (rather than tippers subsidizing rides for non-tippers).

If I have to tip uber drivers, guess i have no use for it. The whole point is to be frictionless.

> "Tipping isn't obligatory" -- yes, it kind of is.

Do you think that if they received, let's say twice the salary Google intends to give them, they wouldn't "expect" a tip anymore?

It's up to you whether you want to tip or not. If he "expects" it and makes it known, give him a lower rating.

>Uber drivers will occasionally ask for tips

I've never had anyone ask me for a tip. I think that ship has sailed as far as Uber goes. It's now the expectation that you don't tip uber drivers. Hard to see how that changes.

Even if someone did ask me, I'd tell them that one of the reasons I use Uber is to not have to carry any cash.

You could always just not tip.

I, on the other hand, would prefer them to compete on price. I like saving money.

> "Tipping isn't obligatory"

In what way is it obligatory? The vast majority of Uber riders don't tip, and have no intention of doing so.

They must have meant "culturally obligatory". Americans (at least New Yorkers) have a tradition of giving generous tips to all workers they perceive as not making a living wage.

In other countries, tipping isn't as common and can be even be seen as rude (in Japan, for example).

I'm American and live in New York.

You don't tip Uber drivers. I'm sure some small percentage of people do, but it's definitely not the expectation.

(Taxi drivers, on the other hand, do expect tips.)

Not feeling obligated to tip was almost the entire reason I prefer Uber over traditional cab companies in the first place.

> "Tipping isn't obligatory" -- yes, it kind of is

The driver can put up a sign asking for a tip, but I don't feel obliged to give one.

I don't tip the cook in a restaurant. I don't tip the receptionist at a hotel. I don't tip the farmhands who picked the vegetables I eat at the supermarket. I don't tip the truck driver who unloaded all the goods I buy. I wish all of these people earned a higher wage and I'd be happy to pay more at the point of sale, but I wish the practice of tipping disappeared.

What's appalling to me is that tipping (regardless of QoS) is even still a thing. Tipping was made big during the Great Depression. After the economy rose back up, tipped wages should've been rose back up to match minimum. Effectively abolishing the ridiculous idea of tipping even if your service sucks. Thankfully, a few states have realized how ridiculous the current system is and made it mandatory tipped wages (before tips) are the same as non tipped wages (California being one of them).

You're against paying less as a result of increased business competition? Are you a driver or an shareholder of Uber/Lyft?

I routinely take Uber and Lyft and have never been asked for a tip. I never plan to tip either because it's not part of the deal. It's the company's job to provide them a livable compensation, not mine. Not tipping is already culturally entrenched in these services, so them suddenly trying to make it a cultural norm isn't going to work because most of us are against tipping culture.

Uber discourage drivers from asking for tips, the Lyft app ask you to give one.

Use Lyft, they let you tip in app then you don't have to carry cash.

I agree with you. I have used Uber when visiting San Francisco and San Diego and all 9 rides have been great, but the price seems low. We now know that they lost 1.2 billion dollars over a six month period. BTW, I have always used Uber in ride sharing mode, never exclusive. I don't mind cash tipping since I always travel with lots of small bills. The secret of good hotel experiences is handing out of modest tips to everyone who helps you, and including Uber drivers seems fair enough.

EDIT: re: hotel tipping: I tend to stay at the same hotels when I travel. Still, tipping maids and other helpful people should be done regardless of expectations of good service during future stays.

In India, the concept has taken off because of Uber and Ola subsidizing the fares by paying the difference from VC money. The moment they stop subsidizing and start raising prices to make them par with what drivers get paid, the consumers will shift back to auto-rickshaws. If they start dropping prices, the drivers will shift back to inter-city routes.

Tipping is the worst form of 'wage', and it's sad that restaurants in United States have made it a norm already.

This is going to be buried, because I'm way late to the party here...but interestingly, Uber automatically sets your tip level at 20% for Uber TAXI in your settings, which you can change down to 0% and up to 30%.

Don't feel obligated or bad about it. If the job isn't meeting the driver's financial needs, he'll start doing something else.

The market can sort this out for you.

With so many competitors in the marketplace, such as Lyft, Gett, Via, Juno, and now Google, seems like Uber's leadership position is at risk. There appears to be very little differentiation between all of them, and while Google is starting out with carpooling, it is just a matter of time before they expand. Not sure how any investor could ever justify Uber's $60B valuation. In 10 years, will likely be 1/10 of that.

They've done everything right in terms of building a brand.

> seems like Uber's leadership position is at risk

You could have said that about any of the ex-Googlers who went off to try to develop a 'better' Google. At this point, Uber have the mindshare, at least amongst everyone I know, so unless Google have a 10x improvement planned then they'll just compete in Uber's shadow like the rest.

There are a whole bunch of .54/mile commute carpool apps out there. Uber & Lyft have them / have had them too. Usually they don't pan out because it's not enough money for the hassle.

Waze carpooling has been around since May [1]

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/alphabet-unveils-program-for-car...

This is an expansion of the service area and availability.

Back in the day, when Google opened up a 411 service, Microsoft did the same. It looked like a way to expand the search engine. After several years of operation, they shut it down. Why? They were collecting voice samples to feed into their voice recognition system, and they had collected enough.

I can't help but wonder if this ride sharing is a similar move. It sounds like a stepping stone for the kind of services that might be practical with self-driving cars. There might be some angle on collecting data that isn't obvious.

Google had to get in at some point. They should have entered a year ago may be but I think this is a good enough time. Google can afford to not take a cut for their service and hurt Uber quite a bit. If they are not taking a cut they can also reduce the price for the rider.

However, how can it be viable to the driver. I understand if someone is already going in that direction they can make a little money but if I want to live on it (like Uber is pitching) will the price be enough?

How are they vetting drivers? I wouldn't trust a driver if all they had to do to qualify is download the Waze app.

Once they have a critical mass of robberies, stabbings, etc., then the machine learning can easily filter out undesirable drivers. Not a problem.

Are you ironic? Do you see what's strange in that? Machine learning isn't exempt of racism. Google has a lot of background on people, but it's generally accepted as unethic to filter undesirable people based on generalizations, even if they were statistically correct.

I can't tell if you're continuing the jocular tone of your parent or if you're serious that this is the concern that actually came to your mind first. I charitably hope it's the first.

Haha, looking through your comment history, you have absolutely no right to be using such a concescending tone.

Does your resume include any position besides "old, disgruntled, unhappy, friendless programmer"?

The OP was being sarcastic.

I think you missed the satire but you raise an interesting perspective. For example, if machine learning knows through a user's phone that they match the locations of someone who drink drives will their online persona be disciplined without their knowledge? The scenario takes a twist if that person was actually a bar worker and not a drinker. Who do we appeal to to reclaim our online reputation if all the patterns match but we are a false positive case?

Google knows everything. A person's search/browsing history is more revealing, and arguably more predictive, than a dated background check.

They have the ability, but whether they actually violate everyone's privacy is hopefully a theoretical matter.

The Bay Area does casual carpool without it ever being in the news. It's been going on for decades. I took it almost every day for 3 years and never had an issue.

It sounds like Google might be tapping into the strong community that exists rather than starting something new.

The students at my Alma Mater (University of Waterloo) organize similar carpools to/from Toronto via Facebook Group. The only vetting for drivers and passengers alike is that you have to claim to be a student on Facebook.

It's extremely popular nonetheless.

If it's a subgroup of https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupsatwaterloo/ then it would require an @uwaterloo.ca email to join the group.

Ah, you're right. It's been a while :)

As part of registration, the app asks for your work email address, and sends a verification email there. The pilot program is only open to few companies around Google Mountain view, like LinkedIn.

Washington DC has had un-vetted ride sharing since the late 80s (slugging). Never had an incident.

I probably would. It's not like Taxi companies have a great track record of choosing their drivers.

Most people are decent. If they are giving you a ride in their private car, then consider that they are taking a chance on you as well.

Looks like for now at least, they'll be using the HR department of participating big companies as Customer Service. If your colleague screws you over on your way to work, who you gonna call?

This won't be the first true ride-sharing program, but it's high enough profile to show people how ubers and lyft of the world have highjacked and distorted the meaning of that word.

Uber is not part of the "sharing" economy. This is.

Doesn't Google give "directions" to Uber? Literally & metaphorically?

If Google starts charging a premium for consumers like Uber who use its services with a major commercial reason, Uber wouldn't be able to sustain.

Uber bought their own mapping company for this reason.

This ought to be a boon for vanpool's where demand in terms of source and destination can be matched to drivers and 6+ passenger vehicles. Researching the necessary correlations would be fascinating work.

It's exactly @ridewithvia

What if actual there were a licensed Taxi service that offered the online/app capabilities of Uber? Do you think that would compete?

Many do. There are several reasons they're not very competitive. They were late to that market, just following Uber's coattails. Their advertising is not as slick and the apps often have poor UI, so it's not as enjoyable and effortless to use. And significantly, they actually follow the law, which results in higher costs to the end-user than law breakers like Uber.

Several markets have this (several also have taxis IN uber app). They often fall back to cash payments.

In some UK cities and in New York there is one. It's called Gett (http://gett.com/uk/). It's more expensive and the experience is worse.

Curb is the app I've seen for Taxi service.

Probably not. What makes Uber/Lyft so compelling is that they can do two things cab companies are legally not allowed to do: (1) subsidize fares with VC money; and (2) cross-subsidize between surge fares and fares during periods of low demand.

From my office in the Watergate, it takes a good 5-7 minutes to call an Uber/Lyft (some GPS/app bug causes people to drive right by and end up on Rock Creek Parkway). If it wasn't $3 to my apartment in Gallery Place, I'd just grab a cab from the cab line.

This is an actual ride sharing experiment instead of a taxi for hire business, quite nice to see this.

Wait, doesn't Lyft use Waze? So it's Lyft in a different interface?

Why would you pay to carpool to/from work instead of arranging carpool with a coworker, paying for your share of gas directly, and cutting out 1) the (future) middleman 2) the tax man?

> Why would you pay to carpool to/from work instead of arranging carpool with a coworker, paying for your share of gas directly, and cutting out 1) the (future) middleman 2) the tax man?

Because the middle man is charging nothing, and its easier to use the middle man to find people that are good car pool partners by both desired arrival/departure time and where you are going to work from or going after work than trying to ask everyone around your work, and the tax consequences of accepting money to defray expenses don't change with or without the presence of the middle man.

Because no one at my work lives near me, but some guy who works a block away might?

It's about awareness and opportunity required before the arrangement you suggest, imo.

If Waze becomes the "I need a ride " or "I'm coming to work, want me to pick you up?" handy-dandy awareness machine that is dynamic (key point) and universal (in everyone's pocket) then i think it becomes another management-benefit tool for the scores of workers that do not own cars in areas without transportation.

Before I go to my retailer I'll check waze to see if anyone I know needs a ride. Likewise when I drive home.

This is missing from our engagement with employees - a way to help with transportation.

I hope waze works the way I think it will.

Google likes to use software to eat the world. But sometimes their software-only approach just ends up slobbering all over it. The point of Uber isn't the "sharing" of a ride, but the availability and predictability of getting one.

On the point of software eating the world google may be uniquely positioned to make something of this scale work- They have trend data for a majority of people with smartphones and I often see from Google Now cards that they know what I'll do generally before I have even decided. If used in the correct way it would deliver huge value and disrupt the established patterns of car ownership.

I predict this will fail as it is described today. Because it pays little and is meant to find people on the way already, 1) people won't be dedicated to driving people, 2) which will make it unreliable to get a ride, 3) which will cause people not to use it or at least not rely on it. Also, with little money, 1) whole segments of the (population (especially in the bay area) won't be incentivized by the money, 2) people will be less likely to go out of their way to pick anyone up, and 3) one or two annoying ride sharers will cause drivers to decide picking people up isn't worth the occasional annoyance.

Ok, not unexpected given that Drummond stepped back from being a board member, of course they got that seat by buying nearly 7% of the company[1]. Which if they had sold it to the other investors who came in on $62.5B round[2] they could have taken about $900M out which they could use to start their own ride sharing service. Sort of like drinking the Unicorn's blood to create a spell that will kill the Unicorn. The irony here, especially after Google did the same thing at Apple, big investment, board seat, oh wait you have a business that seems to be a winner (iPhone) lets step back and do that!

I wonder if this will make it harder for GV to participate in any sort of funding rounds.

[1] "Google Ventures invested $258M at $3.7B post-money valuation in 2013" -- https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Uber-does-Google-ow...

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-03/uber-raise...

You're saying all that as if, right before Drummond stepping back, Uber hadn't announced that they'd start doing self-driving cars, pretty much forcing him to step down out of conflict of interest.

I'm not sure I understand, are you saying this is some tit-for-tat move after Uber acquired Otto? Sounds a bit Machiavellian even for Uber and Google. Would love to hear the actual back story if that is the case.

I think the gp was just saying,

Google and Uber started in different places, and therefore there didn't seem to be a conflict 5-10 years ago. i.e. Google = fully autonomous car research; Uber = practical service for transportation.

However, as they both iterate and approach their logical local-optimums they find more and more that there is actual competition. i.e. Uber and also Google = a service "driven by" a fully autonomous car fleet.

Absolutely not saying that. You're trying to portrait him as some kind of spy, waiting to see if Uber turned out to be a good idea to get out of the board. What I'm saying is you can only construct an argument like that by omitting the obvious reason he stepped out.

Not a spy, just not aligned well with the companies they partner with. Google is doing its level best to find additional markets it can expand into. And it has a history of expanding into the markets of people that it invests in. Your typical VC won't generally invest in a second startup going after the same market as one they are already invested in, and Google Ventures is nominally "separate" from Google, but they seem to jump in when without their partner from time to time. Once, maybe twice, can be a fluke but one of the things startups always worry about is Google (or Apple or Microsoft or Facebook) jumping into their space with infinite marketing dollars and hundreds of idle staff members. One could be forgiven to think that if they were investing in you they wouldn't do that, but this sort of behavior should make startups think long and hard about taking a GV deal over an investor who wants them to be successful.

I wonder if that impacts GV's ability to participate in future deals. It seems like it should but business can be funny that way.

Uber are also developing their own maps. So clearly steering their own path from Google by taking these 2 steps.

In the case of the smartphone, though, Google was working on a smartphone a year before Apple was. Apple got the jump on it, with a brilliant design.

I think this has more to do with a self-driving car play than anything.

Can we stop calling every new taxi service "ride sharing"? Are people "sharing" anything in any meaningful way? The drivers car isn't shared, he sells a ride, that's a Taxi. A medallion or other arbitrary system doesn't define what a taxi is.

Can I tell uber I want to share a ride to the airport with any stranger? (my taxi co will do that)?

Ironically, this is probably the first prominent "ride sharing service" that is actually intended as a ride sharing service.

BlaBlaCar?

> prominent

BlaBlaCar is quite prominent in Europe, or at least when I was there two years ago.

BlaBla car is very prominent in Europe.

It has some 20 million users in three continents and it is valued at $1.6 billion: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/blablacar-a-french-...

https://www.blablacar.com is present in more than 20 countries, mostly in Europe (where it started), bu also including countries like India, Brazil and Mexico...

It wasn't available in my country. People here tend to post on Facebook pages like 'Going from CityA to CityB, 3 spots available, phone#'.

So someone made fairly good aggregator for those pages where you just pick the date and places! Worked very well few years ago.

> Can I tell uber I want to share a ride to the airport with any stranger? (my taxi co will do that)?

Yes you can, but the logistics is up to you.

WRT to Google's model, the commute is being shared.

> Can we stop calling every new taxi service "ride sharing"?

Yes, but this is a ridesharing service, not a taxi service.

> Can I tell uber I want to share a ride to the airport with any stranger? (my taxi co will do that)?

Isn't that exactly what UberPOOL is?

My point really that we always had ride sharing, it's car pools (which is obvious from Ubers naming). The regular uber is a taxi service and a service for organizing car pools is a car pool service.

I agree that uberPool and this is much more ridesharing.

"The Renting Economy" doesn't have the same ring to it...

If you use the "pool" feature you are sharing rides, though.

Yes, you can tell them you want to share a ride with a stranger. These are ride sharing services. Sometimes there isn't enough demand for sharing or you pay extra to ride alone.

> Can I tell uber I want to share a ride to the airport with any stranger

Yes.

Uber and Lyft have had to tackle so many legal issues already. Drastically improving and modifying how they deal with drivers on a daily basis from both an operational and legal standpoint.

If what the article says is true about google vetting problem drivers with mere user reviews, they don't know what they are getting into.

I think the idea is great of course, and I imagine it would cut down on freeway traffic during commute hours. It just seems that the legal web of trust, insurance, safety, etc will be a lot to handle.

If this is strictly to more easily facilitate carpooling during rush hour, there's some precedent. In the Washington DC area, for at least a decade, possibly more, there have been "Slug Lines" outside the city for people commuting in. The idea is you go to a specific place via public transportation or park there, then drivers heading into the city pick you up so they can use the HOV lane. There's a similar setup in the evening where you'll catch a ride back with a different person.

I've never used it, but as far as I've heard it works well. I don't think there's any compulsion to pay, but maybe it's generally polite to offer a few dollars for gas. This sounds like a more automated version of that.

This happens in many places i guess. But when a company gets into picture to facilitate this, things like safety/insurance comes into picture. I am sure Google might have already figured that out, if not any small crime incident by a driver would cause huge reputational damage.

It's different because it's carpooling, which is typically covered by most insurance policies.

https://www.waze.com/carpool

>Auto insurance policies in many states including California typically allow not for profit, share-the-expense carpooling. Waze Carpool is designed to help riders and drivers share the cost of carpooling on a given ride. It is not designed to allow a driver to make a profit or to earn a salary. Payments to the driver, by the rider, will always be less or equal to the cost of the particular drive, taking account of such factors as gas and vehicle depreciation.

Underscoring that, the WSJ article notes that "Waze’s current pilot charges riders at most 54 cents a mile". This is equal to the federal standard mileage reimbursement rate for 2016 (https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/2016-standard-mileage-rates...). Which suggests they're trying to aim for exactly that, using an established standard for the per-mile cost.

I use it regularly to SF http://sfcasualcarpool.com/

> If what the article says is true about google vetting problem drivers with mere user reviews, they don't know what they are getting into.

And I think you underestimate how much google knows about us. Do you think one can't tell a.... "problematic person" from the shit they're watching on youtube?

The article doesn't really make clear that this is really shared carpooling (which has existed for decades), NOT driving for hire a la Uber and Lyft. The reason for the 54c/mile limit is that is the IRS standard mileage rate, so anything that and below is not considered drive-for-hire.

Am I the only one who laughs when I see, "Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., . . . ."?

Umm, who reading this article doesn't know who Google is? That construction is almost always there to let you know who some no-name subsidiary or division of a much more well-known company is.

In this case it functions in the reverse if at all--reminding people that Alphabet is a thing, in case you didn't know.

Anyway, I just think that's funny.

WSJ's primary audience is folks in business or finance. From my understanding, they have automated aggregators and algorithms that consume those articles, and look for constructs like that for tagging/categorization.

Well algorithms can be advanced enough to reference Google with Alphabet automatically without putting need to write Alphabet in article itself. I don't think what you're saying is the reason to write it in the article

If your algorithm can't automatically associate Google with Alphabet without a cue, you have bigger problems.

I don't think it's funny... it's a business publication. It's not presuming you don't know who Google are. It's just saying they're a unit of Alphabet. There's no harm.

> Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., began a pilot program around...

So, basic question, What is the difference between Alphabet and Google again? It seems like everything is still being branded as Google. I know it's slightly off topic, but I am honestly confused as to when something is not Google.

It's just your average shell company thing. People only make a big deal of it because it's a thing Google did.

Yeah. I realize the shell company thing, but I also seem to remember them talking about brands being differentiated from Google, but every announcement continues to be the Google brand.

From their most recent 10Q, Alphabet currently breaks down their revenue into two segments:

"Our reported segments are described below:

• Google – Google includes our main internet products such as Search, Ads, Commerce, Maps, YouTube, Apps, Cloud, Android, Chrome, Google Play as well as hardware products we sell, such as Chromecast, Chromebooks and Nexus. Our technical infrastructure and newer efforts like Virtual Reality are also included in Google. Google generates revenues primarily from advertising, sales of digital content, apps and cloud offerings for enterprise, as well as sales of Google branded hardware.

• Other Bets – Other Bets is a combination of multiple operating segments that are not individually material. Other Bets includes businesses such as Access/Google Fiber, Calico, Nest, Verily, GV, Google Capital, X, and other initiatives. Revenues from the Other Bets are derived primarily through the sales of Nest hardware products, internet and TV services through Google Fiber and licensing and R&D services through Verily."

https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20160331_alphabet_10Q.pdf

Lyft recently shut down their commute share program due to lack of interest... and now Alphabet is restarting it.

Was it a lack of interest or poor economics? My coworker found that he could take a Lyft commute share, which was often empty, get to where he was going and pay much less. So, just like a Lyft on discount.

"Google takes on Earth by building a new mechanical planet"

The best part of the interview is the way Sam has asked questions.

Goober

Wondering why Napster was ruled illegal :)

When I was younger and financially unstable, I had a decision to make. Take a crappy restaurant job or live out of my car. I chose to live out of my car. Every time I hear the argument that people in the restaurant industry are getting unfair pay, I ask myself, "I wonder who made that decision to work there in the first place"

Stop this bullshit tipping. These people made a choice and then chose to complain about it.

Also, this only seems to occur with FOH employees in the restaurant industry. You don't really hear BOH employees (you know, the people who actually do the work of cooking your food) complain.

Not everyone has a choice, for example if you had kids at the time then living in your car would be unacceptable. Meanwhile, restaurant patrons make a choice to eat somewhere where tipping is customary.

If you had kids then you wouldn't need to live in your car because the government would volunteer to pay your rent.

Great news for the 2.5 million homeless kids in the US.

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20141117/homeless-ch...

Yeah, that was a stupid comment. My experience was basically that while living on a minimum wage job my coworkers who had kids were way better off than the rest of us. Agitating because they were the people who really seemed to care the least. Even with their kids they only wanted to do the bare minimum.

Clearly that isn't always the case though, thalami you for pointing that out

Its nice that you think its that easy. People who have never been poor for very long seem to bizarrely overestimate the welfare state.

Most people that fall into financial hardship can either pay the same bills you do or end up homeless. Some portion of the long term disadvantaged can eventually find their way into programs to help them out after years of waiting.

My experience with it first hand was that people I had worked with who had kids had a higher standard living than I did, and couldn't have been struggling that much since they still had money for cigarettes alcohol and weed, whereas I would barely be able to pay my rent and eat and couldn't afford air conditioning. I'm sure that isn't always the case though, I've probably just had an unusually bad experience with the people I've happened to know.

Was it not your choice to have the kids?

I'm tired of this cultural excuse of "what about the kids!"

If you chose to have kids, either explicitly, or through choice of recklessness, you deserve to own up to your decision. If you can't, or won't, that's what CPS is for.

Let's stop giving people excuses just because they brought another person into the world. In fact, lets hold them to an even higher standard for choosing to invoke a LIFE without themselves being able to support it.

It is very interesting. I worked in restaurants for many years and I never knew a server who made less than the back staff - usually they made several multiples of their pay in a night.

I assume it's because servers (and I was one!) feel generally more empowered when it comes to their pay; they think complaining will accomplish something (strengthen social norms to tip), while kitchen staff know that what they get is what they get.

No doubt server pay varies wildly, but I worked at a cheap buffet essentially just bussing tables and I never made less than kitchen staff and sometimes made up to 6x what they would make in a shift - usually about 3x, and management directed that we report the minimum amount possible, to get out of their payroll tax contribution, I assume.

On top of that, employers are in fact nominally required to pay the difference between their tipped wage and the "real" minimum wage if they don't get enough tips (for some reason this isn't commonly known) to make the difference, but that situation is probably rare enough that businesses skate by without fulfilling their legal duty. [1]

Frankly, I liked waiting tables and I'd do it again if it paid as much as programming. It's not all that crappy. :) And at the same time, I have a lot less sympathy for servers than I used to. Save your sympathy for the people who are paid minimum wage and don't get tips. Yes, that server is getting $2.15 instead of $7.25, but a) the business is required to make up the difference between $2.15 + tips and $7.25 and b) no server I have ever heard of, anywhere, is making less than $7.25/hour with tips.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

This is interesting. I am also in the same camp except BOH. If I could get paid to cook for living with the same pay I make now, I would do it in a heartbeat

This is what I find interesting about the situation, and why I see tipping as a cultural rather than ethical imperative. If it was about poverty or social justice, it is a terribly inefficient way to go about fighting those battles. If instead you theorize that Tipping is largely about smoothing interactions between those of a higher economic class and the people who immediately serve them, the whole thing makes more sense.

Even taking class out of it, tipping when you are out drinking kind of makes sense like "hey thanks for working so I can go have fun. Here is a little extra so you can treat yourself when you are off work." The idea is to make it less awkward for the customer to drink in front of someone who is sober and working, Because that is kind of an awkward situation for many folks

Is there a possibility for smoothing out this social awkwardness that didn't involved monetary value?

Is there a way for society to make these jobs appear simply as a job and not some exchange of money for this psuedo caste system I am placing on you while I eat my salmon?

I am generally curious. I don't eat at restaurants for this reason. I have no interest in being involved with this human interaction. Which is a shame because food is my life...

Sure, there are plenty of places where you Walk up to order and pay and then walk up to get your food, and tipping norms seem super different there, I would assume because it seems a lot less like you are being directly served. If we are running with my model, the idea would be like they are manufacturing your food and you are buying it, rather than someone coming and serving you at your table.

If you are in the South bay, try dish n dash for super good food sold in that style.

To be clear, I am not super clear on tipping norms in that case, but observationaly, most people seem to tip a lot less, and some people just tip the change.

These types of establishments are the places I'm finding myself if I decide to go out to eat these days. Me personally, I come for the experience of the food, not the service.

I much prefer this system too!

They are getting unfair pay in some places, thanks to bullshit laws that give them a truly ridiculous minimum wage.

No they aren't. Read the law. A server's hourly wages with tips will always be at least the federal minimum wage.

If you live in a place where you know your servers are paid less than they spend on gas and don't tip on the premise that they should have made better life choices congratulations you are a terrible person. You could just factor that into the cost and decide if in total the experience is worth it or you could cook your own food.

Did you make the throwaway account just to congratulate yourself for sustaining yourself with food bought by welfare/others instead of working for a living?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393551 and marked it off-topic, because most of it turned into a nasty spat.

All: we ban accounts that repeatedly post the ugly sort of comment seen below, so please don't post those.

Unfortunately the fine subthreads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12393884 get punished with the rest. I feel like a teacher making everyone stay late after class.

We should stop calling this ride sharing. It's still taxi. Modern taxi.

Larry finally got his way :D

That's an interesting comment. Would you care to elaborate?

RIP Uber. 8/29/2016.

More like "Google late to the party... again"

read: "Google ride-share is to Uber as Windows Phone is to Android". Late to the party, tragically deficient in first-mover network effect advantage, and on the decline in credibility since they're shutting down all moonshots, including, as we saw as recently as today, halving the staff at Google Fibre.

Talk about panic catch-up with no intrinsic advantage, nor vision. "Mountain View, start your photo-copiers". We know where that ends...

Larry and Sergei have shown in the past 3 years that they have no staying power on anything that isn't an obvious profit lay-up in short order. This thing will burn through cash at a rate that will make any of their other ill-fated ventures look like a bargain. I mean, UBER has already coughed 1.2 yards this year!

Smells like Google+ all over again. Isn't this the sort of sham that the Alphabet carve-out was supposed to avoid?

They do have access to Google Maps data which provides sizable competitive edge

If it we were in 2012 that would be true. There are multiple competing mapping suppliers now which are perfectly good enough for taxi navigation, including Uber's own system, not forgetting Tomtom's third party stuff, AAPL's heavy investment, etc. This looks like too little too late.

And yet Uber still uses Google Maps.

In every Uber ride I've been in recently, my driver's used Waze for navigation.

Which is owned by Google.

Waze has been owned by Google and shared data -- both mapping and traffic, etc. -- with Google Maps for years. Using Waze, in a very real sense, is using Google Maps, and vice versa.

Heck, the new Google service at issue in this thread is Waze Carpool.

Waze does not use the same data as Google Maps.

Google Maps always gives perfectly-accurate directions to where I live. Waze does not give accurate directions to where I live. It goes out of its way to force drivers to enter a gated community that's adjacent to my complex. What's even worse is that the entrance to my complex and the entrance to that gated community are on separate arterials [0], and if you try to enter my complex through the main entrance, Waze will instruct you to make a U-turn out of my complex and go into the gated community. Google Maps does not do that.

As such, I text every driver picking me up at my place to tell them to use Google and only Google and to not use Waze (and I tell the name of the street they need to enter my complex from). I watch them on the map, and if I see that they have disregarded my message and do things that only Waze would instruct them to do (like pass by the entrance to my complex, and/or turn onto the arterial the gated community is on), I cancel the ride and call another.

[0] Here's a map, just to show you how terrible Waze is:

           ROAD A              |
    ---|---------------------------
       |  ...G.........        |
     R |  . GATED     .        | R
     O |  . COMMUNITY .        | O
     A |  .   .................| A
     D |  .   .      MY       .| D
       |  .   G      COMPLEX  .|
     D |  .....               =| B
       |      .               .|
       |      ..||.............|
    ---|---------------------------
           ROAD C              |

Without fail, no matter what direction you are coming from, Waze will insist you turn onto Road A and go through the gated community. Google actually knows that the main entrance to my complex is on Road A (and sometimes, on rare occasion, it'll pick up the side entrance on Road C, but I don't count on it) So if I see a Lyft or Uber driver, after I text them telling them both not to use Waze and to only enter my complex from Road B, a) pass by the entrance on Road B when driving northbound on Road B, b) turn right on Road A when driving southbound on Road B, c) fail to turn left on Road B when driving westbound on Road A, or d) turn left on Road D when driving eastbound on Road C, I just cancel on them and request another driver.

Google Maps at least uses Waze data for traffic, perhaps it doesn't go both directions.

> Waze does not use the same data as Google Maps.

They share (some) data, they may not use entirely the same data. Though your problem seems quite possibly something else:

> Google Maps always gives perfectly-accurate directions to where I live. Waze does not give accurate directions to where I live.

That could be "not using the same routing algorithm" rather than "not using the same data".

OK so they used another Google product, but the Uber app itself uses Google Maps which is what I was referring to.

I believe it doesn't. They acquired some assets from Microsoft Bing maps team:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/uber-acquires-part-of-bing...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Treo was way before Andriod.

First mover advantage is rarely an advantage at all. My guess is that google sees this as optionality and testing to get things right like insurance etc. in anticipation of self driving cars. At the very least it allows them to extract more value from Uber when Google finally have self driving cars ready to sell them.

I really don't see how Uber is worth more than a few billion in a few years. Google is playing the long game hard and I think they are going to win here.

Makes sense. But they've shown no staying power in any of their other long term initiatives. Google Fibre (halving staff). Self driving car (looking for investors/partners). Robotics (disinvesting). Google+ (firing the boss after 2 years). Glass (debacle buried under the carpet). Motorola (flipped for a few billion pronto and now struggling). Shopping (trounced by Amazon). Cloud? (for second place, Microsoft Azure is ripping them a new one). Music/Video premium services? (spare me as my eyes roll towards anybody else). And they're now miraculously going to do Uber? Which requires enormous long term financial commitment? With the above record? Unlikely. This company knows how to do ads, and that's it. It fails at everything else.

> they've shown no staying power in any of their other long term initiatives

You actually can't find even one? :)

Well clearly they're brilliant at creating free platforms for advertising. They just seem to be poor at doing anything that requires explicit payment.

I knew you could do it.

haha... yeah. :-) Good ol' google.

Fair points above, but what about Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, among others. Those are solid successes!

> First mover advantage is rarely an advantage at all

Genuine question (not a snarky comment as it might sound), but can you link to any research that indicates it's 'rarely' and advantage?

I've been reading books recently that emphasise the importance of being the first to market with something innovative. Your brand then gets associated with the product/service ("hoover", "Uber", "google") even when referring to the general category.

Second-mover advantages do exist, but is there any research on whether it's more advantageous than being a first mover who iterates? I know it can happen, but in this case I'd rather be Uber with an established brand & mindshare rather than Google playing catch-up.

Those books aren't really mentioning Google Search as an example, right? It didn't have first-mover advantage.

It kind of did, AFAIK it was the first functional search engine.

Everything else at the time was pretty terrible.

Yeah, no true Scotsman ends up losing first-mover advantage.

It's not no true scotsman though. Google search was very different to what came before it. The only similarity was the UI.

That's nonsense. The only two differentiators were the minimalistic UI (at a time when load speed of a web page was noticeable) and the better quality of the results. There were a bunch search engines already, all of them with a search box where you typed stuff and got a list of results.

Take any big market business started over 10 years ago, and look at the current major players. Then look at all the people that started before them. You will basically never find a company that started 1st, also be the market share leader 10 years out.

There are some exceptions, but once a 10 year period has passed, the biggest player is rarely the first player. Also, the markets don't usually become really profitable for a while.

Uber has not won yet, and I don't think they will be in 1st place in 5 years.

Google started at least a few years after many, many sites including yahoo.

> I've been reading books recently that emphasise the importance of being the first to market with something innovative

That worked well for the Newton, the Lisa, the Nomad, Amiga Inc, didn't it?

Contrast with Palm, Mac & Windows, iPods, and so on and so forth.

Perhaps the difference is being a first mover while the market is establishing itself, before it then gives way to another innovation cycle.

I suppose in that case, the key is innovation. So Google would be wise to innovate over the competition... but they might stand a chance due to their deep pockets. It hasn't worked out well for their attempts to get into several markets though.

Why is this being downvoted? Honest question.

After Glass, G+, Fiber and possibly Boston Dynamics, I'm failing to see any moonshots living up to the hype as well. At least up until now.

Probably because it's a middlebrow dismissal that's barely even middlebrow.

Ok, makes sense. I got the point, and just focused on it, but I agree it could have been better written.

well it doesn't get more "middle brow" than your vacuous meta non-comment. Actually the reality is that it's being downvoted because being anti-google is not a popular stance amongst the tech set, even if there is, as this poster seems to suggest, merit to the logic.

Well sure it could turn out like Google+ vs Facebook or it could turn out like Google Maps vs Mapquest or Gmail vs Hotmail.

When I first used Google Maps and Gmail, I knew that it was far superior than the others.

The only thing I liked about Google+ was the group hangouts..but nothing else.

MapQuest, Hotmail never innovated until it was too late.

I hesitate to predict how it will play out, but the article reports "the company has said it aims to make fares low enough to discourage drivers from operating as taxi drivers," which seems fundamentally different.

This is a hitchhiking service, not a "I want to get from my hotel to the airport" service. What are the chances that someome happens to be passing by my hotel on their way to the airport and happens to have room for an extra passenger. LOL. Retarded (to view it as competing with Uber/Lyft) Just part of the media that is itching to start a new drama.

This is it? Ha. Uber must be letting out a collective sigh of relief.

I can't help but think that if Google is successful, the entire endeavor will end up like Reader: Google wipes out the competition, decides that they no longer want to run the service, end it, and there is no-one left to fill the void.

Has Waze quit using the childish cartoon stuff by default under Google?

How should I reword this in order not to get downvoted? Is this better?

When I've used Waze in the past, I notice that the default UI features cartoon spermatozoa moving around a road system. Such an aesthetic is going to be off-putting to most serious adults, but it sounds from this article that Waze is playing an important role in some actively developed Google products. I'm curious whether anyone here can shed light on the marketing strategy.

Come one, most serious adults don't give a rat's ass about how cartoonish or not their mapping app looks, as long as it works well.

When I said adult, I was thinking of people over 40. I think you're thinking of younger people. There's no way, for example, my parents would use it. They'd feel uncomfortable, that they were stumbling into some sort of "thing for young people".

Google is simply bored while making so much money so comfortably, with an absolutely dominant market position in search. So every few months they need to do these copycat things simply to entertain themselves ;-).

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