Tuesday 3 February 2015

Google vs Uber

And so it has begun. According to a report in today's Daily Telegraph, Google employees have begun using driverless cars as taxis booked via an app that operates in the same way as Uber's.

Ironically, Uber's app uses Google Maps of course, and so Uber has been supplying Google with vast amounts of useful data for the past few years, which no doubt they will exploit fully.

Uber meanwhile, counts Google as a major investor and is building a robotics centre to develop its own driverless cars.

Not so much a case of disruption, more of complete and utter transformation of several industries rushing toward us. Car ownership to car usership. ICE to EV. Liquid fuel to solar. Driver to driverless. Digitisation. Connectivity. Telematics. The 'T' world of a trillion sensors. The end of privacy. It's all happening. 20 years from now, our cities will be free of traffic jams and desirable places to live again.