by EmployerOfTheMonth
Last week in Alphabet’s Q3 earnings call Alphabet provided investors with some updates on Waymo:
Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet
With Waymo, in the third quarter we built on our Early Rider Program, both expanding the group of participants and beginning to test pricing models.
And then in terms of Waymo, in the third quarter, as I think you know, we extended our Early Rider Program to a larger group and we moved into very early days of commercialization. So we do now have people paying for rides, and we’re also testing pricing models. I think the main point we’ve said this repeatedly is that we are intently focused on safety first and ensuring a great user experience. And so what that means is we’re really expanding the program methodically. We’re taking an iterative approach as we continue to broaden the geographic footprint. And then on top of that, as we’ve talked about on prior calls, we’ve been developing the B2B opportunities. So in Phoenix, as an example, we’ve been piloting with several partners who are sponsoring a service on behalf of their employees and customers. And, again, it’s early days, so small revenues. But we’re pleased to be testing this out as well. And then on top of that, continuing to explore, applying our technology for logistics and deliveries and for personaluse vehicles and for lastmile solutions for cities. So you can see a move in the third quarter, but as we said repeatedly, it’s very early days and we are taking a very deliberate iterative approach to broadening it out
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Goggle
And when you mention areas like YouTube and Waymo and Cloud and Hardware, they all fit the category. But we take a very longterm view, and we want to invest to get the user experience right. And we are pretty confident that when we do that, the value will follow
Personally I think this service flew under the radar, for example I only found out about this service in detail last week. It could be a game changer!