Just as a contrary response to everyone else pointing to Waymo's (real) historical tendency to be very risk-averse...
Waymo has been feeling a lot of pressure from Uber and other companies, who have developed their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did, even if Waymo is still momentarily ahead. Waymo's legal attempt to sidetrack Uber's program seems to have failed. So Waymo's executive may be at the point where Alphabet is asking them, "we've poured literally billions of dollars into you: when are you going to produce something beyond good marketing?"
FWIW, I think Waymo is still significantly more risk-averse than Uber and ahead of it technically, but you can't project its historical hyper-caution into the present or future indefinitely.
> Waymo has been feeling a lot of pressure from Uber and other companies, who have developed their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did
Did the other companies develop their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did or have they just hyped their programs up more than Waymo did when they started?
Uber strikes me as a company that'll spend a ton of money, try it out for a year or two, show off a few prototypes and back off once they see how hard it is. In the meantime they may produce a few vehicles with flaky autonomous capability that will hopefully not get anyone killed. The company has money, muscle, and can-do drive, but the company isn't rooted in nerdy tech the way Google is.
Makes far more sense for Uber to license Google's tech and integrate with vehicles.
Who has developed a SDC faster than Google? DE reports it is not at all close. Google working longer and appears spending more and just wants it more. Plus Google has the prephereal systems like simulations to test. P!us Google is the only one with the cloud infrastructure that is in play.
Waymo has been feeling a lot of pressure from Uber and other companies, who have developed their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did, even if Waymo is still momentarily ahead. Waymo's legal attempt to sidetrack Uber's program seems to have failed. So Waymo's executive may be at the point where Alphabet is asking them, "we've poured literally billions of dollars into you: when are you going to produce something beyond good marketing?"
FWIW, I think Waymo is still significantly more risk-averse than Uber and ahead of it technically, but you can't project its historical hyper-caution into the present or future indefinitely.