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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

GM went through a similar phase with EDS and Hughes in the mid 1980s (which is of course how GM ended up owning DirecTV).

I can't help but think Google is behaving similarly today, at the height of its power. Cars, Nest, fiber, wireless, robotics, biotech; and I suspect that will continue to expand.

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Except Google's core competency is software. Google has the advantage of being essentially controlled by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

They only need one of those things to succeed (cars). It's hard to imagine that one of the existing car companies has developed a reliable urban self-driving, that is better than Google's.

Google's fiber play has nothing to do with actually making money. It is about making sure that cable companies abide by net neutrality and not cutoff or strangle Google's bandwidth intensive services like YouTube.

It's hard to imagine that one of the existing car companies has developed a reliable urban self-driving, that is better than Google's.

I don't know, some are pretty good, and they don't even need the LIDAR: https://youtu.be/r_RFzC_G5BA

Highway self-driving is pretty much consumer-grade now. Infiniti already has it in their vehicles. Telsa is planning on rolling it out this summer. The main problem is urban and suburban driving and dealing with unexpected situations such as jaywalkers or a cyclists running stoplights or a kid running out after a ball.

That wasn't just highway, but here's a more urban setting, with pedestrian avoidance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihC5flC-38

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