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Comment by Kstarek | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Waymo will contribute meaningfully to the bottom line for at least another 3/4 years, however people had the same mentality of "put up or get shut down" regarding YouTube a few years ago, and we all know how that turned out. That said, I'm still very bullish on both the stock and Waymo specifically.

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Adding more ads and bringing down video serving costs are tangible, achievable goals. Solving self driving is not. I honestly don't think Google has the right culture to deliver either. There's no hunger to win there.

I'm not sure self driving is a matter of Google culture. It's just become pretty evident that, while maybe some limited fully self-driving use cases will become viable in the next decade or two, this idea that you can have your personal chauffeur whisk you door to door even in an urban environment perhaps in your lifetime so you never need to own a car is not happening. And that really disappoints some people who bought into the idea.

I certainly hope AGI happens in my lifetime.

1. I doubt it

2. Be careful what you wish for

You do realize that people are being whisked door to door in an urban environment today, right? And not just by Waymo but Cruise as well. Sure it's small scale at the moment and not available to the average person, but it's happening.

Waymo isn't part of Google though, it's a separate company owned by the Alphabet holding corporation. The other bets within Alphabet do have cultures that are different from Google.

Anyway, I think Waymo is doing much better at this than the rest of the competition. If not Waymo then who? Uber's approach was much worse, and got canceled.

Waymo won't contribute meaningfully for at least 2 decades. Bottom line = profit. Top line = revenue.

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