1) The new map data moves to show how super advanced their capabilities measuring real time data so people build more trust.
2) Uber is also a likely bridge to the mass population accepting self driving cars. First we ditch our own cars for ubers (which are everywhere according to google maps), then when Google decides to swap out the human with AI, it won't be as a drastic jump from where we are now.
Kudos, Google.
More so: let's think about speed of adoption. It takes much less time to replace a small fleet of public transportation vehicles than the huge private fleet we have today.
And from a business model perspective , if an automated car manufacturer wants to compete , he has to start building a public transportation service now. But cars manufacturers have wrong incentives and bad capabilities for such tasks.
So this practically guarantees Google will win a large share of the automated transportation market from the car companies.
Maybe it's time to invest in google ?