So, to be clear, you think that when Google gave Uber 250M in funding (not 1B), in 2013, when Google had without-a-doubt the most advanced driverless car program in the world, and Uber was roughly two years away from beginning any driverless car program, Google made its investment in order to get into driverless cars?
People in the investment community were for sure talking about Uber and driverless cars in 2013. It was clear at the time Uber was going to have to make a buy vs. build decision. But it wasn't out of the question that Uber would become an early adopter and major customer of Google self-driving vehicles.
I agree that one possible synergy at the time between Google and Uber was that Uber might use Google's driverless car technology.
That's very different from the revisionist rationale that Uber was always themselves making a long term play for driverless vehicles, or that Google got into Uber because Google wanted to invest in driverless vehicles.
The narrative at the time was that Uber was going to become a dominant rides-for-hire business (a real business, not a gaping wound hoping that technology would catch up to them) and at least a player in logistics, and then when driverless cars came along, everything would be even better for Uber.
You'll note that as that narrative was increasingly pounded into the dust, Google never invested further in Uber and relations between them have at this point obviously completely soured.
Uber's first massive round was in August 2013. By that time, everyone knew driverless cars were going to be critically important in the long term and Uber would have to make a build vs. buy decision. Whether Uber was ferrying passengers or goods didn't really impact this.
But yes, the investment thesis has always depended on passenger taxi being a decent business for Uber in the midterm.
I don't think that we have a ton of disagreement here. I agree that in 2013, people were looking ahead to a future of driverless cars, and that it was part of the calculation on Uber. I think at that point the assumption was that Uber would probably buy, not build (they did not, after all, start a serious build program for another couple of years), but Uber (I think wisely) was probably on the fence themselves for a while until the technology got clearer.
The claim at the time was that Uber would ferry both passengers and goods. And we agree that the value Uber was claiming was dependent on being a decent business.
I think that what happened since was they were forced into the "build" side of the build/buy decision when it became increasingly clear that they didn't have a decent business in passenger taxi, and they weren't getting traction in logistics. At that point, if they bought driverless cars, you would be forgiven for asking what value exactly Uber was bringing to any business. Now they have to bank on their differentiator being that they have unique access to valuable driverless car tech, which still strikes me as grossly unlikely.
Huh.