The Facebook Offering: How It Compares - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/17/business/dealbook/how-the-facebook-offering-compares.html

<comment><AUTHOR> For the curious, this started out as a D3/SVG chart that we ended up porting over to be 90% canvas, just for performance reasons (especially in Firefox). There's still lots of nice ugly "if (USE_CANVAS) {" stuff in there.

<comment><USER2> I was going to come in here and ask just that question. Now a followup--what was wrong with d3? was it just too slow to render? Or too slow to load?

<comment><USER3> When the bubbles were done as SVG elements, the animation in Firefox became _painfully_ slow. Felt like just a couple frames per second, maybe. (In contrast, the animation was fine in WebKit-based browsers).

<comment><USER4> Is the original available? I'd like to look into this. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This [1] is my hideous destruction of the graphic (sorry) to overlay world population on the Internet with respect to time, data from some worldstats site[2]. I propose that the proper size of a tech IPO should be normalized (and upper bounded) against the possible global reach, which I think the % of world population on the internet does a good job of showing.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/HyeKf.gif> [2] <http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm>

<comment><USER6> Tech isn't only the internet. Microsoft and Apple both went public before the Internet and managed to do quite well without it.

Correlation != causation. Might as well graph it against the number of World Cup or Euro championships in that year and get a much higher correlation since the IPOs seem to all be in an even year.

It'd be much more interesting to look at perfomance vs sector and performance vs the index.

<comment><USER7> > Microsoft and Apple both went public before the Internet and managed to do > quite well without it.

That's because Apple's and Microsoft's products don't (or didn't at the time the companies went public) rely solely on the internet. A big reason why Facebook has such a massive valuation is precisely because the population of the internet has increased so strongly.

<comment><USER8> Have you taken into account Facebook being the reason a lot of people joined the Internet?

<comment><USER9> I would find that a hard claim to believe.

<comment><USER10> I find it plausible. For anything more I'd want evidence, but all I can offer is anecdote. In the UK over the last few years most Android/not-iPhone adverts I saw made it very clear that the phone did Facebook - implying to me that Facebook was a major driver for people buying a smartphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. The largest IPO in the original dotcom boom, above everything else on the chart except Google and Facebook, is a company I don't recall ever hearing of: Corvis Corporation.

They started in 1997 as "Nova Technologies", changed to "Corvis" in 1998, did an IPO in 2000, and promptly took a nosedive. In 2004 they became "Broadwing Corporation" (which I also don't recall ever hearing of), and in 2007 they were acquired by Level 3 Communications. It's amazing how little remains of them on the web. Except for some terse stock info, from which I got the above, all I can find are a couple of articles from 2000 talking about how everyone loves them.

<comment><USER12> I found this interesting too. After doing some digging of my own I found this:

Corvis Corporation is the first company to make the intelligent all-optical network a reality. Our solutions enable telecommunications service providers to construct manageable all-optical networks that will accommodate the continuing growth of Internet, video, voice, and other data traffic

Source: [http://web.archive.org/web/20011103200605/http://www.corvis....](http://web.archive.org/web/20011103200605/http://www.corvis.com/display/1,1405,35,00.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> First day value change seems misleading to me. I think it represents the value at which select shareholder can buy the initial shares issued by the company and not the value which they are first traded at the stock market.

Consider for example linkedin, which got "issued" at around 35$ per share. The first price to hit the stock market was around 70$. This is because the first shares are sold to a select few at the 35$ price so there can be volume at opening. Those people traded the shares at 70 right away.

We can conclude at least two things from this : 1-Banks will try to scam companies during IPO by issuing shares lower than market value so that early buyers can pocket instant profit 2-If you are not in the selected few, making big bucks during an IPO is much more difficult than what is represented in this graph

<comment><USER14> You are correct. The relevant citation is this. [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/06/07/the-us- ipo-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/06/07/the-us-ipo-cartel/)

On average, banks take about 7% of IPO proceeds due to a Wall Street cartel of underwriters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its fun to see majority of IPOs in 80s were proper Engineering companies. I was just talking to someone who is a Civil Engineer (in his 50s) and he mentioned the same. He did comment that people in his generation built proper engineering companies. I don't understand why do people think Internet startups are trivial. One way we can say Internet has been game changer - Groupon brought easier advertising mechanism for local SMBs. LinkedIn connected professionals across the world. FB has created a virtual interconnected world. Of course there are duds like Zynga whose biggest achievement so far is pasting cows on the Internet. And multitude of other companies like AirBnB who are disrupting entirely new industries. These companies are definitely gamechangers.

However, I've seen lot of my colleagues from fields like Mechancal Engineering or BioMedical Engineering jumped on SoLoMo wagon and mostly working on some awful apps. I think Internet has diverted attention from real engineering to some "shitty" startups/solutions that are in search of problem, thanks to dot com bubble in 90s.

<comment><USER16> To be honest if I could go back and talk to myself ~2000 and I said that the most exciting , hottest Internet company in 2012 is a website that allows users to post text based messages to other users of the same website I would have been somewhat disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's really cool. What do the size of the circles represent? Is it the same value as shown on the Y axis or something else?

And what do the colors of the circles mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> The size of the circles is also the I.P.O. value -- the same value shown on the Y axis.

In the first few steps, it's not terribly useful. But once you switch to the logarithmic scale, it's nice to keep a reference to the true (read, "linear") relative value.

<comment><USER18> Actually that's misleading. If the radius of the circles go up linearly, the area/size of the circle goes up exponentially. So on the logarithmic scale, the height changes with the log of the value but the size goes up exponentially!

Edit: nevermind this, it's wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. As @arscan says, in this as in most bubble charts, the value determines the circle's area, not the radius. Otherwise it certainly would be misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Title was: "Graphic: Compare all the Tech I.P.O.'s Since 1980 to Facebook's"

That seems strictly superior to me. Who's the editor/bot changing every submission titles back to the article title even when it removes (sometimes vital) context?

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't me. I didn't realize that HN had the ability to swap 'em out on you.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, they'll change 'em sometimes if the title is too linkbaity or editorializing, usually to the title of the original article or blog post. Recently I've seen a few titles being changed to the source title even when the source title is completely unhelpful, leading me to wonder if someone hasn't tried to automate the process a little too effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn Bubbles don't just happen overnight. It's a slow loosening of caution as people convince themselves that a boom is unstoppable. I think people are still shell shocked from the '00s. A few more large and successful IPOs could change that. We won't see the next one coming until the current boom turns into a bubble. By then we'll all be too happy with how things are going to hit the brakes before we fall off the cliff.

<comment><USER20> I think it's different this time. People are aware that a bubble is an eventuality, so this time the game is knowing when to jump ship.

<comment><USER21> Sign #52 that you are in a bubble, people start using the phrase 'It's different this time'.

<comment> mkr-hn [https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=boom+%22Its+dif...](https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=boom+%22Its+different+this+time%22)

I'm about to set the range to various booms and busts to see what people were saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The circles should be colored to indicate performance.

<comment><USER23> I definitely feel as though the color information is being wasted; the placement of the circles along the horizontal axes already conveys "period of time" pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I think this would be even more interesting if the "Value 3 years later" number was incorporated into the graphic somehow.

<comment><USER24> See page 5, especially the transition between 4 and 5.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the real value of this chart from my perspective is the transition from slides 3-4 (watching things go up the first day) and then slides 4-5 (watching some stuff bubble up, and others fall off a cliff). So I found myself just cycling back and forth through slides 3-5 to get a feel for the data. The obvious cool thing to watch is the early-2000's dotcom waterfall.

Nice job. Could probably have represented things slightly better given what you are trying to get across (using colors & ball sizes), but cool nonetheless.

<comment><USER26> I actually think the transition from 3 to 5 (directly) is more interesting than the one from 4 to 5. Well, they're both interesting, so it's cool the visualization supports both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I'd really like to see would be trails going off into the future -- rather than just a +/-% for the +3yr mark, why not just show the whole story for each company (perhaps only when you hover over it to avoid clutter). This would make the current color-coding much more useful -- each trail would be the color of the company's IPO year.

</comment><comment><USER28> Witness the trends... and tell me the bubble isn't about to burst.

<comment><USER18> Facebook's IPO will be bigger because they put off their IPO as long as possible. In fact they got special dispensation from the SEC to delay the IPO even longer. So comparing FB in 2012 to Google in 2004 is not really useful.

<comment><USER29> Google IPO'd six years after they were founded, Facebook waited 8 years. The comparison is not _that_ unwarranted I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Glad to see Google blowing everyone out of the water.

<comment><USER31> Actually Amazon and Yahoo and others have much more impressive "after 3 years" returns

<comment><USER32> Those are both terrible metrics. They're sensitive to IPO timing, for a start. Facebook is going public very (!) late, it's already achieved market dominance and very significant revenue. Contrast Microsoft, which went up before Windows 3.0, when they were mostly a software supplier to IBM (their other offerings were distant second place products to market leaders like Wordperfect or Lotus).

And "after 3 years" misses a lot of detail too. Apple looks pretty good in that metric. But their "after 12 years" numbers are a disaster. And of course "after 30 years" looks to be pretty fantastic for them.

<comment><USER33> I'd just like to point out that you are chastising them for going public _after_ obtaining reliable revenues for several years. This used to be the minimum requirement for going public.

<comment><USER32> Who's chastising anyone? All I said was that they were "late", which is undeniably true. And I tend to agree with you ethically, though that "used to be" leans heavily on "used". Since the PC revolution in the 80's, almost no tech companies have gone public with multi-year profitability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I do appreciate the bubbly themed chart.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this IPO will signal the beginning of the latest tech bubble reaching maximum capacity. I can't imagine how a valuation as big as this, held against a revenue stream that's nowhere near as tangible, could possibly create meaningful growth for shareholders. Unless Facebook decides to find more ingenious ways to sell the data we provide.

<comment><USER35> It will fertilize the valley and help more tangible start-ups spring up. If all those new millionaires don't move to foreign countries to avoid paying taxes, that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I notice bands in time with these IPOs. Very interesting. We're in the middle of another band it seems like.

<comment><USER37> You might be noticing the lack of IPOs following the 2001 bubble burst as well as the 2007-8 financial crisis. Since these are unrelated, these "bands" might not be a general trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Between slide 4 and 5 there's one tiny bubble that blows up into a big giant bubble and a small one on the left that sinks a little. They are Yahoo, up 3,590%, and Apple, down 25%. They should do a follow up to see how they are doing today.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice. Suggestion for next time is to have the names of the other large circles when you tap on them.

</comment><comment><USER40> Works great on an iPad.

<comment><USER41> I was surprised it works great on my 3.2 android tablet with firefox as well. Everything works perfectly, great job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It would be interesting to have a "where are they now?" slide to see how many of those companies are still around and still worth anything. And on a log scale apple, google and microsoft shouldn't blow everyone else too far out of the water.</comment>


How to Win the Deal Every Time – Sales Conversation Tips - <AUTHOR> https://www.saleswingsapp.com/infographic/how-to-win-them-every-time-sales-conversation-tips/?utm_campaign=Submission&utm_medium=Community&utm_source=GrowthHackers.com <comment><AUTHOR> Tracking and properly analyzing your analytics is the #1 way to understand what's happening with your business. That's why analytics tools along with sales automation tools are so crucial to business and sales executives. While we know that sales calls are a crucial part of product success (and maintaining the company's bottom line), until now we haven't had a proper way to analyze call success. While sales can be tracked, figuring out what works and doesn't was total guesswork. Until now.</comment>


Towards a better Erlang: Elixir isn't Hipster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexrp.com/2013/02/14/elixir-isnt-hipster/

<comment><USER2> Take a look for a fresh aproach on building distributed systems around a node.js message bus and special DSL to describe message flows : <https://github.com/salboaie/SwarmESB></comment>


Waymo: Google's self-driving car company - <AUTHOR> http://waymo.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs:

• Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers

• Waymo directly rolling their own fleet

• Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides

• Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up

• All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hoping for consumers to still want to own a vehicle rather than just pay $1 to get a ride

So: How much is Uber's market share worth? I suspect it'll evaporate overnight in every market where another service has autonomous vehicles and they don't.

Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff.

I predict blood on the walls.

<comment><USER3> > Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after > autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for > vehicles will fall off a cliff.

I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious question to anyone who echoes this sentiment:

Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why?

All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicles will bring to the world of transit basically boils down to a model that's a mixture between taxi service and (really crappy) bus service, both of which exist today and have existed for several decades--and basically predate the automobile when you think about it. Yet somehow self-driving vehicles are supposed to completely change the mix of transit use when it's not really adding any capability changes. So I'm genuinely curious as to what the magic sauce is that makes people so giddy for this future.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I have to agree with you skepticism. Let's e.g. replace "car" with "apartment". Imagine an apartment where you pay a premium to have all the cooking, cleaning and maintenance done for you. This obviously exists today, yet >99% of people don't use it.

I believe people like owning things, and using them to do stuff. This is a basic fact of being human. Probably goes right back to the stone age. I doubt autonomous cars will change that pattern.

<comment><USER4> > I believe people like owning things... This is a basic fact of being human

There are some objects we enjoy forming a relationship with. Your favorite kitchen knife. Your bed. Your sports car you take out on the weekend.

There are other objects we just want to work. Your running shoes. Your daily commuting vehicle. Your dish rack.

Of course it varies from person to person which items fall in which category.

There will always be a market for people who want to own and fetishize a car. The same way there is a market for people who want to own and fetishize their record collection.

But it is usually a smaller market than the market for people who just want convenient access to the thing. I.e. Spotify.

Which will be bigger, Spotify for mobility, or your neighborhood hipster automobile dealer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example:

\- communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block the road, allowing just one car through. Or traffic light out of action, so you negotiate with other cars using hand gestures, light flashes etc

\- endless roadworks, that change what lane you're allowed to go on, turn a two way road to one way road.

\- random debris on road. Plastic bag - safe to drive through, wooden plank - safe, plank with nail - not safe.

\- loss of GPS, mobile data, or both (again, surprisingly frequent)

\- making way for emergency vehicles (sometimes need to drive into lane you're not normally allowed to go, I.e. Bus lane, pavement)

\- policeman coordinating traffic

So far, I haven't found any evidence of autonomous cars dealing with the above. If anyone has, please post.

<comment><USER6> The page about technology says, "Our sensors observe that the cyclist has extended their left arm. Detecting the cyclist's hand signal, our software predicts that the cyclist will move to the left side of the lane." This suggests to me that they're trying to deal with situations like the ones you've brought up.

<comment><USER7> There is a difference between "trying to deal with" and "product on sale next month".

These cars are overhyped. They've been just around the corner for the last 10 years. They are the Duke Nukem Forever of Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER8> >These cars are overhyped

Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary.

> They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year

B-S. Holy revisionism BS!!

We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing.

And you make it sound like it was supposed to be released 10 years ago! Vaporware! They told us we'd have AI cars in 2006! It never came! <\---- False reality that never occurred.

Why do you feel the need to lie about recent history? Shouldn't you observe that if you have to make a nasty lie to support your argument, maybe your argument is wrong?

You're definitely parroting the contrarian point here, but you're being very low-effort about it. Contrarian can be cool but please try harder.

<comment><USER9> We absolutely were talking about self-driving cars in 2006, when no less a "major player" than the US Government had already been investing in this "science fiction" idea for two years, in the form of the DARPA Grand Challenge races. The 2007 race even required compliance with traffic laws in order to win. Google's autonomous vehicle program is a direct result of this project - that's why they hired Sebastian Thrun, whose team won the 2005 race.

I don't know how serious it was, but part of the initial PR about the Grand Challenge included the goal that it would enable the US military to convert some significant fraction of their fleet of ground vehicles to autonomous operation within ten years.

I do think the previous poster was overstating their case a little, but not so badly as you seem to believe.

<comment><USER10> Wasn't there a breakthrough year with DARPA challenge? It seemed like for a while the results seemed to indicate that autonomous vehicles were basically impossible, then suddenly a few vehicles just killed it one year. I could be wrong, but seems like that threshold may have been less than ten years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More business info in this Forbes article:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/12/13/googles-s...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/12/13/googles- spins-off-self-driving-car-unit-as- waymo/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#31c4b6572af4)

TL;DR:

> "We're now an independent company within the Alphabet umbrella,"

> Google is currently equipping a fleet of 100 hybrid Chrysler minivans with > its sensors and computing gear that will soon join its nearly 60 prototype > autonomous vehicles. The company hasn't yet disclosed when and how it will > begin generating revenue from its efforts and Krafcik declined to discuss > specific business plans today.

<comment><USER12> I still finding it silly that they are trying to go straight for L5 (which is the only case where you can fully remove the steering wheel).

By the sound of it, they already have an L4 going (can drive itself in 99.99% of the situations, might need user take over in very rare cases).

Why not for now release an initial car with L4, and collect pile and pile of data, which is what they need to get over that last 0.01%.

<comment><USER13> I attended one of Google's talks on this. The rationale is that humans can't be trusted to take control in a timely manner for that 0.01%. Their internal testing with an L4 system on trained Googlers (who were told to remain alert in the event that action needed to be taken) had instances of testers sleeping, eating, putting on makeup, etc. They concluded that if Googlers with explicit training couldn't behave themselves, then L4 definitely wasn't sufficient for the general public; autonomous driving had to be all or nothing.

<comment><USER14> Or ... the car could monitor the driver too, and alert them when they lose attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver means you can get it to its destination more quickly and more cheaply.

(The thought is you'd hand off to a real driver once you get in to a city)

<comment><USER16> Because it's all marketing bullshit. In fact that's a good indication that it's marketing bullshit - the fiction that the tip of the self-driving car spear will be consumer vehicles.

<comment><USER17> +1 Forget about trucks. What about trains? That's an even easier problem to solve than trucks.

<comment><USER18> Trains don't even need AI. It's the lack of good incentive (the required capital investment vs. potential for future savings) and angry drivers' unions that are stopping innovation there, I'm sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's going to be interesting watching how local police departments and municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.

In my town (a suburban town with a low crime rate), the police spend the majority of their time enforcing traffic laws. The municipal courthouse is always filled with people, and if I had to guess, I'd say that 80% of the people are there as a result of a traffic violation, while the other 20% are there for drug offenses/other.

It seems like autonomous cars would lead to a drop in traffic offenses and thus revenue. Even if only a tiny portion of the town's revenue actually comes from traffic violations (when compared to local property tax), there would probably be a lot more idle time for police.

I suspect that they will first start to raise our property taxes to compensate for the lost revenue, but I would think that the long term effect would be a reduction of municipal workers/police.

Of course, this doesn't apply to other areas like Philadelphia, where police spend only a small percentage of their time enforcing traffic laws.

<comment><USER20> Of course, the flip side to this is the notion that autonomous vehicles will free up the existing police force to do more important things. In most cities there is a distinct lack of officers on the street, usually due to budget constraints. Now they can take all of those officers used for monitoring roads and highways and have them do other, more important things; all without increasing the number of officers or budget.

<comment><USER21> Or more realistically, make a substantial proportion of them redundant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

<comment><USER23> "how they compare to Tesla"

Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd guess they compare quite favorably...

<comment><USER24> Tesla will have 100,000 prototypes being trained in shadow mode for a billion miles per year across the globe within a year. Tesla will compare quite favorably

<comment><USER3> And how many of those miles are in conditions like:

* that road with the one-foot deep pothole (it's more like a sinkhole at that point, though) in the middle of a lane

* the perpetual construction zone where there are five layers of lane markers, only one of which is the actual layer of lane markers

* the 10% grade two-lane winding road in the dark with 2 inches of snow on the road and more coming

* open highway with a constant 30mph crosswind

* dense fog with less than 100m visibility

* torrential downpour with so little visibility you can't even see the lane markings on the road right in front of you

Those are all conditions I've driven in, and I can think of several other horrible driving conditions that I haven't yet had the (mis)fortune to drive in. Just because you can drive well in good conditions doesn't mean you can drive well when things get tougher--as the driving records of many human beings can well attest.

<comment><USER25> There are some conditions a human _shouldn 't_ be driving in. For example a hurricane or while intoxicated.

We can likewise say there are some situations a machine shouldn't be driving.

As long as the machine can identify when it is incapable as a driver, it's only the same as the human pulling over for a nap because they can't stay alert.

Sure, if you ran a taxi service with such a system you'd have to send a regular taxi to pick up the customer, but it's only the same as any other kind of breakdown like a puncture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google's commitment to SDCs has always seemed half hearted so I wonder if this indicates that they are getting more serious about it. Moonshots at X have been getting the axe, the SDC stuff seems to be the only obviously viable one right now.

To the surprise of many folks (myself included) it has turned out that SDC tech is probably for existing manufacturers to develop versus software guys learning how to build cars without the massive supply chains needed to assemble 4000lb widgets. Before anyone points to Tesla, try getting inside a $140k Tesla and then a $140k Mercedes and it will be obvious what advantages there are to having manufacturing experience stretching decades.

<comment><USER27> I haven't been in either. What differences do you mean?

<comment><USER28> I think mostly it is the fit and finish. I've been in a 2016 BMW 750i and a 2013 Model S, for about a total of maybe 30 minutes in the BMW and 10 in the Tesla.

The interior of the 7 series seemed special to me. All of the buttons felt great, seats looked beautiful and were super comfortable to sit in. The control panel had many small OLED displays and they looked great. And small details like when I went to adjust the seat, by placing my fingers on the buttons, information about my seat configuration popped up on the center console, so I could see what I was changing. Also the rear passenger seats and rear windshield had power sunscreens.

Here is a picture of the iterior of the BMW: [http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2015/11/2016-BMW-75...](http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2015/11/2016-BMW-750i-xDrive- interior.jpg)

Here is a video of the 7 series interior: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDMAibH1G4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDMAibH1G4)

In comparison, the Tesla's interior felt mostly large and empty.

Here is a picutre of the interior of a 2016 Model X: [http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/03/2016-Tesla-...](http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/03/2016-Tesla- Model-X-P90D-interior.jpg)

Don't get me wrong, Tesla makes some super amazing cars. But the high price tag isn't for the interior.

(Disclaimer: I own a lowly 3 series so I may be slightly biased to BMW)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting that this very same day, the US Government is looking into proposals to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication in passenger cars to enhance safety.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to- chat-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-chat-with- each-other-1481645582)

<comment><USER30> Seems a little premature to require this as we don't necessarily know that this would help.

<comment><USER31> I think we do know it would help. If your car can't physically see the car 1/4 mile ahead, but gets info that it has slammed on its brakes, thats very useful.

If you've ever driven in bumper to bumper traffic on a highway you know how invaluable this info would be, even to a human driver.

Plus info about road conditions (icy spots ahead!), etc..

<comment><USER32> I also feel like if you know where every car on the road is, you can also optimize the traffic light timing.

There is no reason to sit at a red light at 2:00 in the morning when there are no other vehicles, pedestrians or bicycles on the road. But the law currently requires it.

<comment><USER33> So bicycles would have to carry the car-to-bicycle communication device too?

<comment><USER25> Sounds reasonable.

They already require other safety devices like lights at night and brakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Although this site doesn't really offer any substance, I'm glad that Google is making this project more public. Not only it nice to have updates on the project (I do hope they continue to update this site with their progress) but I think PR campaigns like this will go a long way to swaying popular opinion on self driving technology. The faster they can get the public on their side, the fewer regulatory hurdles they will face.

</comment><comment><USER35> On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess there is no manual failsafe?

<comment><USER36> These cars will likely have many sensors of different types at overlapping locations, its not likely to keep going if all are completely unusable.

But I wonder about the snow though. How does the car know where to go when there are no identifying lane features? Maybe its not as hard of a problem as I believe it to be?

<comment><USER37> I really don't get these questions. "How will the car drive in whiteout conditions where the road is frozen over and not at all visible?" Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over.

For substantially less crazy conditions, you can infer where the lanes would be by (a) looking at the spots of the road you can see, (b) prior knowledge of the road from experience, and (c) looking at oncoming cars and the flow of traffic, and driving in a way that doesn't surprise them. Though it's likely the case that you shouldn't be driving in these conditions anyway.

<comment><USER38> _> Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over._

You mean carefully get to the nearest settlement as soon as possible? Some of these storms can last for days at a time. Stopping to wait it out in the middle of nowhere, especially if you don't have a full tank of fuel to keep the car warm for extended periods, is a pretty scary situation.

<comment><USER37> Hmmm. If the car decided, before your trip started, that it's too dangerous for anyone to drive where you want to go because of possible weather and environmental conditions mid-route, would that be useful or enraging?

<comment><USER38> I imagine a bit of both. Getting caught in a snow storm is a pretty horrible experience, and I would gladly stay home knowing I would have otherwise ended up in one. But at the same time the forecasting isn't all that great, so often the storms don't amount to anything, and you would have been perfectly fine to be out there. Sometimes the storms even come up without any warning (most of the snow we get – especially that which causes driving issues – is from the lake, not the clouds). Having to essentially hibernate in the winter because the car is always erring on the side of caution could become pretty enraging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am confused. Was there some news today that they wouldn't have their own car, and instead would use their tech with existing car companies?

</comment><comment><USER40> There is an announcement today too that _Google_ will not be operating that technology, but focus on selling self-driving to car manufacturers.

Does this mean that _Alphabet_ will keep on working on building their own cars but under a different company? The association between the two is a little confusing at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER41> A lot of comments here and I haven't seen one that addresses the problem of impulsivity. Many / most of the times I need a car are not schedulable events but impulses. For example when I'm working on a project around the house, it's typical to need to run up to the hardware store 3 times in a day.

I think autonomous transport will be very popular but _shared_ vehicles will be hardly more popular than Uber / taxis are now. If you think that shared autonomous vehicles will be significantly more popular than shared conventional vehicles are today, I'd be interested to hear why. Is it primarily cost savings?

<comment><USER42> I think you may be experiencing recall bias.

How do you get to work every day? How often do you go to the grocery store? What about going out to dinner?

For myself, living in the Bay Area, anything related to driving or owning a car is a nightmare -- not that that has stopped me from owning a car. Driving from Mountain View to San Mateo takes about 45 minutes in the morning at 75 minutes in the evening. I went to SF to have breakfast with a friend this past weekend and finding parking took half an hour. I'd love a self-driving car that could just drop me at my door. Autonomous cars should also lead to drastic traffic improvements, assuming the cars will eventually be able to communicate with each other in a reliable way.

Maybe you live in a less densely-populated area? I have an aunt that lives in a rural area and I couldn't imagine a need or desire for autonomous cars there.

There is definitely a long way to go, but think of all the advantages! Parking can be automated and condensed, which means more land is available for buildings or parks or anything else. If you suffer from traffic problems now, your daily commute could be cut by 50% or more. Shared vehicles should cost less than what you pay for gas and insurance now. High availability is a real possibility if someone can figure out how to make the economics work. Ride sharing can be almost completely automated, leading to less pollution.

<comment><USER41> I don't think you read my comment clearly. I think autonomous cars are going to be quite popular, but I don't understand how that necessarily leads to _shared_ instead of _privately owned_ autonomous cars.

<comment><USER42> Ah. We might be talking past each other. Looking back, a number of the advantages I mentioned are inherent in having self-driving cars. But the benefits compound when we have shared self-driving cars.

Example:

Traffic is improved with self-driving cars because most traffic jams are caused by humans. However, traffic is improved even more when carpooling is automated with a shared self-driving fleet.

 _Shared_ autonomous cars will become popular as these compounded benefits are realized.

<comment><USER41> I understand the points you're making. But I think you failed to address my question. Let me rephrase.

We have fleets of shared vehicles today, but most people prefer personal transportation.

What is it about autonomous shared cars vs shared cars with a human driver that makes you believe that driverlessness will lead to increased use of shared vehicles vs personal vehicles?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel like they're really getting on the cute-sy theme, from the car's friendly design to the name "Waymo".

The lack of control is still kind of terrifying so I think they're trying to make it as non-threatening as possible.

<comment><USER44> I've seen what happens when humans have control of cars. It's not pretty.

<comment><USER42> This is the point that I see everyone discounting. Whether autonomous cars turn out to be feasible or not, we know for a fact that humans are bad drivers. Don't we owe it to ourselves to try something different?

<comment><USER45> There's a nice analogy with fighter jets taking off from aircraft carriers. They have handlebars in the top of the cabin that the pilots are required to grab during take off. Experience had shown that, when they took off with their hands in the steering stick, the acceleration was so high that they'd react by pushing the stick, plunging the plane into the ocean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> How long until someone puts a personal gym inside a self driving SUV, so you can workout during your commute? I can imagine people running on a treadmill inside a car while it is stuck in traffic. Or at least sitting on a trainer.

<comment><USER47> Or just a bed.

<comment><USER48> Given that these cars are supposedly going to strand us on the side of the road (or in our workplace parking lot) on many snowy winter nights, they had better have beds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What is it about car hardware+software that gives people confidence that the operating system / some core process won't crash or reboot in the middle of a turn or brake? I'm not familiar with the architecture of "mission critical" systems which I assume would be similar to what they use in these cars.

<comment><USER45> You'll like this story about the redundancy in the Space Shuttle saving the day: [https://twitter.com/marssciencegrad/status/80696366235102003...](https://twitter.com/marssciencegrad/status/806963662351020032)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm not sure how I would feel about the absence of steering wheels and pedals within their cars.

Tesla's auto-pilot can be over-ridden due to the presence of the steering wheels and the pedals. But in a car that has none, you're not in control. And that, is scary no matter how you look at it.

<comment><USER51> Once the technology is mature, I don't think it would be any scarier than driving with the average driver as a passenger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override option seems critical to safety.

<comment><USER53> a big red emergency switch telling it to pull over and shut down may be useful.

Anything more than that would mean your system is not fully autonomous, because the driver would have to pay attention all the time. What good is manual override if there's nobody paying attention? It would also mean you need a qualified driver, you couldn't use it to ferry around children, disabled people or simply people without a license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How is this news? So what, they slapped a new name on the project. What about actual progress on the tech?

Honestly, with Google's track record, I'm starting to doubt that this will ever ship. It just seems like a huge marketing tactic at this point. Plus. all of the talent has moved to companies like Otto and comma.ai; who are making tangible progress in this space.

<comment><USER54> I had thinking the same thing when I saw 600+ comments. I thought they announced L5 along with the spun out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Its great that waymo has its own brand now. I really wish udacity's open self driving car takes off as well. I predict there will be a linux of self driving car software/hardware kit that will be battle tested, reliable, secure and solid with contributions and test cases from all around the world.

I also really think someone should invent a solution to convert existing modern cars with brake, gas and steering from CANbus to self driving cars by installing a kit.

The current car manufacturers can simply make really good cars with cameras and sensors integrated. One can then install open software adapted for the region that is always getting updates. The test cases and lidar data is put in a giant shared repo whose ownership is the community. E.g OpenStreetMap and wikipedia.

Same software can be used for smaller robots to dispatch packages to the front door, or robotic lawn mowers, rubbish trucks, cleaning trucks e.t.c

That would be a fantastic future to be part of.

<comment><USER56> Wow, you just described everything that commaai[1] did (or tried to do).

They tried the kit that can be self installed[2] but decided not to continue[3]

They also have a dataset that can be downloaded by anyone[4]

And they have open sourced the software on their github, [1]: [http://comma.ai/](http://comma.ai/) [2]: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will- ship-a-999-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will- ship-a-999-autonomous-driving-add-on-by-the-end-of-this-year/) [3]: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13453344/comma-ai-self- dr...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13453344/comma-ai-self-driving-car- comma-one-kit-canceled) [4]: [http://research.comma.ai/](http://research.comma.ai/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Google seems to like logos with a W shape (Wallet, Wave, now Waymo). I wonder if that's on purpose, as in making a reference to WWW in some way.

</comment><comment><USER58> I can see the potential of self-driving cars for long distance trips (e.g. SF- LA) or for big trucks, but I can't see it for everyday use especially if someone has kids. How many times an average person in US uses her car? 2-3 without kids and maybe more than 4-5 with kids(I think my numbers are probably too low)? For this to be viable economically, the pricing has to be very low and in order to be very low all of the people has to use this "self-driving service". This creates another problem though, you will have to plan your "short ride" ahead of time, e.g. what happens if you want to leave at the last moment and no car is available around you? And then there is another problem, if the self-driving service is cheap the ownership of the car is going to be even cheaper. A lot of variables and difficult to answer questions. I don't know if we ever going to be a society without car ownership and to be honest as long as there is no traffic I like driving, and it makes me relax. I see it more as a fancy option for cars, like what Tesla does, but to completely remove the car ownership is going to take many decades. Before cars there were horses and stuff so the transition was easier. This is going to be very tough.

</comment><comment><USER59> Am I the only one getting a 404 on this URL?

</comment><comment><USER60> You'd think Google would have considered optimising the content on this page as per their own recommendations:

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwaymo.com%2F&tab=mobile)

</comment><comment><USER61> My real question is whether they will be able to convince american customers to give up one of their most prized status symbols. It feels from this webpage their main argument will be safety, so I guess we will find out how much human life weighs against the thrill of owning and controlling fast, expensive and shiny machines.

</comment><comment><USER62> More power to anybody who's willing to put their children in a car and not pay attention to the road or have control the outcomes of relentless traffic threats all around them.

In my view, all of this technology is much better suited to aid the human driver as a safety enhancement system rather than a full replacement for vehicle navigation.

</comment><comment><USER63> On the FAQ section,

Q: "I'd like to join the team. Where can I find a list of open roles?" A: "You can learn more about available roles here[1]."

And interestingly, that link[1] is broken :)

Update: it's fixed NOW!

[1]: [https://waymo.com/join/](https://waymo.com/join/)

</comment><comment><USER64> Interesting that they built the site with Angular 1.5.7. I thought they would want to showcase Angular 2.

<comment><USER65> Showcase what? It's just a basic marketing site. Did they even need angular?

<comment><USER64> Probably not. My point is that what (I'm assuming) is a brand new site is not built using the latest version. I would have thought that an organization such as Alphabet would want to dog food as much as possible and in doing so tell the world that 'Hey, look at this! It's super easy and pretty! You can have a site like this too if you adopt our technology'. Instead, it suggests to me that the barrier to learning the new shiny is big enough that whoever made it didn't want to learn it. That raises the question, should I learn it? Why, if even people at Alphabet don't want to? Do they doubt the long term prospects for Angular 2 so much that they hesitate in adopting it? Do they not consider it mature enough? TL;DR I read too much into things.

<comment><USER66> Framework Ecosystem and current developer experience/knowledge/comfort level have a lot to do with it in addition to uncertainty.

Dogfooding is nice, but not at the expense of risking not having the site showcasing your new autonomous vehicle company ready by the time the press release hits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What I don't understand is if trains aren't completely automated, planes aren't completely automated, subways aren't completely automated, ships aren't completely automated,

How are CARS supposed to be automated??

<comment><USER68> > trains aren't completely automated

> subways aren't completely automated

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems)

> planes aren't completely automated

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle)

<comment><USER67> >[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle)

Many of which are still piloted by people on the ground.

And I can't take a flight without a pilot yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Really shallow of me, but the name kind of turns me off. "Uber" or "Lyft" are just whatever, but Waymo sounds like... something an infant would sputter out. Or "Lame-o".

<comment><USER70> Goo-gol?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Looking at it, I'm thinking google hasn't learnt anything about the failure of google glass, who wants to buy a car like that?

A car is more than a commuting tool, it really matters how it looks.

<comment><USER72> They're not selling a car. They're selling a driver. They're presumably going to partner with auto manufacturers.

<comment><USER71> On their website they have pictures of both the prototype and other manufacturers' cars. it makes a lot of sense to just sell the driving system, like the android model. But I assume they designed the prototype to capture the public's attention. I just don't know why they can't spend a bit more effort to make it look desirable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Being a pedestrian sharing space with moving autonomous cars is not a future I'm looking forward to, not one bit.

1\. Pedestrian->driver observation and interaction are the primary factors in deciding what's safe.

2\. Roads full of networked autonomous vehicles are a hack away from becoming hoards of hurtling tonnage.

In my opinion this is all a solution looking for a problem and we should know better than to make our roads so utterly hostile to our own kind.

</comment><comment><USER74> ... meanwhile Microsoft successfully attacks the billion dollar office communication market.

Seriously, Google has had so many growth businesses in their hands and just fails to execute on them. This might be for one part because of its internal structure but I get the impression that many of these things look not exciting enough for its leadership.

</comment><comment><USER75> The hardest problem to solve will be the humans who bully the polite self- driving cars:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans- will...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-will-bully- robot-cars-mercedes-chief-warns/)

<comment><USER51> It seems that could be easily solved with regulation. The self-driving cars could even automatically send a video of incidents to the police.

<comment><USER75> You want to regulate politeness?

<comment><USER76> Reckless driving is already a crime (not just a civil offense) in many states. In New York:

"Reckless driving shall mean driving...in a manner which unreasonably interferes with the free and proper use of the public highway"

Simple aggressive driving as described in the linked article is, well, not a real problem. Unless you cause an accident.

<comment><USER75> No one was talking about reckless driving. Aggressive driving could be a problem. That's why it is being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you look at the cumulative miles driven, the slope has a tendency to increase, as you'd expect as you added more cars to your fleet.

In 2013, though, there's a regression in number of new miles logged, and it took until 2015 to catch up to 2012 numbers. Can anyone give insight into the cause?

<comment><USER77> Probably a shift from testing mostly on the highway (which was the initial proving ground for the program) to testing on surface streets

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What does waymo mean?

<comment><USER79> It'll cost waymo' than a regular car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> this comment section is hater news at its finest. autonomous will change all of our lives for the better sooner than you think. edge cases will be solved. the competition will be interesting, rooting for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER81> There's also a Wired article about this at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168781).

</comment><comment><USER82> The only thing I really learned watching that video is that google decided to call its autonomous vehicle unit 'Waymo'.

While I'm excited, I'd love to know how they actually plan to roll this out!

</comment><comment><USER83> > Imagine if everyone could get around easily and safely, without tired, drunk > or distracted driving.

I don't really think we should place drunk driving at the same level as tired or distracted driving.

</comment><comment><USER84> This is really exciting! I see these cars all over the place in the Bay Area, so it's nice to see that they're at least one step closer in making it into a product and thus bringing it to reality.

I wonder about the internationalization of this product, especially if (or when?) it's brought to other countries and regions, such as the Middle East. In some of those countries, women aren't allowed to drive and men drive with extreme speed (and park in the most horrible of ways). While this will cut down on things like speeding / drinking / etc, it may also potentially impact social norms as well.

I'm hoping to keep a level-head about this project, but any step forward in this endeavor is worth being excited about.

<comment><USER85> Women aren't allowed to drive in, e.g. Saudi Arabia, because they aren't allowed to be out of their home without a blood relative or husband. That could lead to mingling with the opposite sex or something like that. "What would happen if a woman got in a car accident? Then she would be forced to deal with the male driver of the other car, a stranger, with no oversight." [0]

So I don't think self driving cars will solve that problem at all, sadly.

[0]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/-ne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/-negative- physiological-impacts-why-saudi-women-arent-allowed-to-drive/280343/)

Quora answers from people that appear to be saudi: [https://www.quora.com/Why- are-women-not-allowed-to-drive-in-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women- not-allowed-to-drive-in-Saudi-Arabia)

<comment><USER84> I appreciate the reply, that's pretty sad to hear. Thanks for the links, they're really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> All I can think of when I hear the word Waymo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMu8V5Xa90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMu8V5Xa90)

</comment><comment><USER87> The self-driving car is just a component of bigger system, as new generation of servers on cloud centers. Riding service is cloud computing. I bet on Uber or Didi in China.

</comment><comment><USER88> They have a number of blog posts that just launched on Medium: [https://medium.com/waymo](https://medium.com/waymo)

<comment><USER89> It looks like they're converting many of their articles from [https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/](https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/) to Medium?

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> This post seems like a "way-back" post - considering Google has announced pulling from the self-driving car market (another HN post details it)...

</comment><comment><USER91> What's the story in the video with 'pulling at heartstrings' by featuring a blind person? The problem of a blind person getting a ride is obviously solved. But more importantly it's an edge case of a need for a vehicle that is self driving. And actually I wonder whether someone who is blind actually would rather have a human driver in the car and feel safer generally that way. Seem to me almost like a strawman in a way. In other words 'if you feel that you have to help the handicapped you need to be onboard with self driving cars'.

</comment><comment><USER92> How will this affect climate change ? I mean, will autonomous driving increase or decrease the number of cars on the roads ?

</comment><comment><USER93> Waymo will be the Android of the cars, that is, Google Technology on other's hardware.

Well decided Alphabet, very well decided!

</comment><comment><USER94> Welp, the site no longer works. Let's hope they didn't shut down the project already, Google Wave style.

</comment><comment><USER95> So when does the Waymo app come out that I can use to get an autonomous car to drive me to the store?

</comment><comment><USER96> The website is pretty explicit about it being just self-driving "technology". I wonder if they just plan to work w/ one manufacturer for now or if they're in talks w/ many. With so much competition, if they're all executed to the same standards of safety, my wallet is going to go w/ better design & aesthetics.

<comment><USER97> > Our testing fleet includes modified Lexus SUVs and custom-built prototype > vehicles. We also plan to add modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans to our > fleet.

Probably safe to say they're in talks with other auto manufacturers that are looking to add self-driving software to their portfolios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> How much alone are the parking lots worth in San Francisco? Imagine a city without those..

</comment><comment><USER99> They will get smoked by Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER100> definite old-school warner brothers inspired logo they got going on there

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaz0YyIcmHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaz0YyIcmHQ)

</comment><comment><USER101> The name sounds like a cartoon car crash.

</comment><comment><USER102> Easily mispronounced "whammo"

</comment><comment><USER103> Somehow the link is giving 404 to me.

</comment><comment><USER104> Do we even need a car in the future?

</comment><comment><USER30> So nothing new, just the name?

</comment><comment><USER105> This is great. Finally a separate division with focus and more accountability on the timeline i guess.

</comment><comment><USER106> "The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_v...](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_view)

"Snowfall is 0 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix)

"Snowfall is 0 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin)

"Snowfall is 1 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland)

"Snowfall is 4 inches."

I hope they are driving far enough from their home bases to get some snow miles under their belt.

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/massachusetts/boston](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/massachusetts/boston)

"Snowfall is 47 inches."

<comment><USER107> Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?

<comment><USER108> Well, they only tested in US cities, so it's unclear what has occurred to them. How will it work in small crowded streets in India, China, or just Italy?

<comment><USER109> Or _Boston_?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much _performance-shaming_ coming from some Googlers:

The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or webp (example: [http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png](http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png))

<comment><USER111> That example isn't even compressed, which could drastically reduce its size.

<comment><USER112> The image shouldn't be a png in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> You mean Alphabet

</comment><comment><USER114> Sounds like "lame-o" D:

</comment><comment><USER115> I'm optimistic. I agree with Musks estimates. At most I see first fully autonomous vehicles being on the roads within 5 years.

Yes, they may only work in places with clearly marked streets but if I could use my autonomous car for daily commute or roughly 50% of the time it's still an incredible achievement and well worth the cost.

<comment><USER116> Those two ideas are contradictory. It's not fully autonomous if it only works in ideal conditions. There's already a bunch of prototypes that work perfectly in ideal conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> This repels me for a few reasons:

\- Instead of talking about their car's capabilities on the front page, they include a pathos about drunk driving. I feel embarrassed how Google doesn't have more things to say about the car.

\- It looks really unattractive, I could hardly call it cute.

\- It's not in production, it's in testing.

These companies are sitting on _mountains_ of cash! And they still fail to do things effectively! Apple and Google are just sitting on their fat cashflows while the world is getting very scary _very_ fast. I'm tired of these "technology" companies doing complete fails of R&D projects, too damn shy to leave their advertising revenues. We need leaders with real courage.

<comment><USER118> They've told you exactly what matters to them: not sexy cars, not the kinds of technology used, but the _goal_ they have in mind. Tesla, by comparison, is building sexy fast cars that happen to be self-driving.

<comment><USER119> And Tesla's "Self-Driving" autopilot already has one attributed death. Google has a few fender-benders...</comment></comment></comment>