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.