The Google Car

Driving a car is just a whole bunch of information processing, if you think about it, like Google did. It is not that big of a leap for the search giant that has long sought to "organize the world's information."

A tech startup with a half million dollar budget could not have attempted this. One thing very impressive about Google is when it was small it tackled small things, when it became big it started looking at big problems. It has innovated at scale. Not that search is small. It is bigger than the car. But you know what I mean.

This car will eliminate stupid road accidents. That's a big one.

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Complete 300K Miles Without Accident, Deemed Ready For Commuting

The cars still need to learn how to handle snow-covered roads, for example, and how to interpret temporary construction signs and other situations that could throw its systems for a loop. ..... has added the Lexus RX450h hybrid car to its self-driving car family .... “One day we hope this capability will enable people to be more productive in their cars”

The self-driving car logs more miles on new wheels

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Robert Scoble's Not Google Car

This video above is not of the Google car. This is Scoble being Scoble.

Robert Scoble: State of the art of self-driving cars on road today (Google, Ford, and Toyota): Turns out I actually caught one of these cars driving on Freeway 280 in January, reports Techcrunch and, back in 2007, I interviewed one of the guys, Mike Montemerlo, who now works on the Google Car ...... Google’s car goes a lot further because it has digital images and 3D maps of the road ahead and even more sensors and algorithms that let it even drive through intersections..... already they have helped me avoid accidents ...... I use my car’s computer more than my TV or nearly any other computer in my life. ....... my sons will be driving fully automated cars ...... The computers inside are safer than most adults.

Self Driving Google Car
Image via Wikipedia

The Official Google Blog: Sebastian Thrun: What we’re driving at: who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside ..... more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. ..... self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow." .... people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting ..... a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science
Robert Scoble: State of the art of self-driving cars on road today (Google, Ford, and Toyota)

If Google was going to put out a TV, it was going to be software heavy, that was a foregone conclusion. If Google was going to put out a car, that was going to be software heavy. That was a foregone conclusion. Driving a car is not the best use of the human mind. This country lost it when it came to trains a long time ago. But now with software there might be a window to turn cars into trains. Too bad this whole thing seems to be a decade away. I already don't drive. I live in New York City. I wish the goodness upon the rest of the country. Not having to drive is a good feeling.

One small step for a company, one big step for public transportation.

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Self Driving Google Car

New York Times: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic: they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has ..... Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated ..... more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008 ...... the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together ..... the company’s ambitions reach beyond the search engine business ....... The project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, the 43-year-old director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the co-inventor of the Street View mapping service. ...... deployment of the technology more than eight years away. .... Under current law, a human must be in control of a car at all times

This is an entrepreneur having turned a company into one big incubator. If you think about it, Google is one big incubator. The founders did the work on the search engine - and it was pretty fundamental - but then they, as a company, have been smart about laying out the vision, and going out there and finding the top people in their respective fields, hiring them, and giving them the resources to go do their thing.

Pretty much all breakthroughs from Google this past decade have followed that path. Looks like you don't have to sell or leave the company you started, or retire, to be able to do the incubation, venture capital thing. This is the corporation as an organism.

What's next? I wish Google were in a position to do something fundamental in clean tech, but it is not. Energy is not a software problem.

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