The red-hot market for rides is getting hotter, with a surprising new entry in the race. Google-owned online mapping company Waze is piloting a carpooling service in Israel, focusing on commuters who pay drivers a fee for a ride to or from work.
The service, which was revealed in a blog post by the company, is available through Waze's mobile app. Passengers in Israel without the app can also book a ride through a separate, new app called RideWith.
"We are conducting a small, private beta test in Tel Aviv for a carpool concept," Julie Mossler, a spokesperson for Waze, tells WIRED. "Waze regularly experiments with new ideas in our backyard, and we have nothing specific to announce at this time."
The move is an interesting one from Waze, an Israeli mapping company acquired by Google in 2013 for about $1 billion—and an unlikely new player in the so-called ridesharing market. There’s no doubt that ride apps are surging in popularity nowadays, with tech-savvy users who have gotten all but used to today’s instant gratification economy eager to avail of such services.
Waze is poised to join a crowded field inarguably dominated by Uber—which, after five years, is still experiencing meteoric growth and muscling its way into multiple international markets. Meanwhile, Lyft has securely grabbed the No. 2 spot for on-demand rides, differentiating itself by fostering a community-friendly image in contrast to Uber’s stuffier, more corporate-minded one. And there's no shortage of similar services, all seeking to frame themselves as complementary to Uber rather than directly competing against it—usually by trumpeting some niche use—including Flywheel, Chariot, Ride, and more.
This is precisely the tack Waze itself appears to be taking. “RideWith is an experiment in the Tel Aviv area that doesn’t compete with Uber: it’s a platform built to enable local drivers to help each other during busy commute hours," a spokesman for Google told The Wall Street Journal.
Drivers who join the Waze program will be limited to only two rides a day, which would limit their ability to earn a salary, according to Waze. The rule would also help the company avoid regulatory resistance commonly faced by companies like the ride-hailing giant Uber, which has experienced pushback in almost every market it has entered into, and survives by relying on its deep pockets and immense lobbying power.
Commuters pay the drivers through a credit card system linked to the mobile apps, but the fee only covers gasoline and wear and tear, computed using indices for the cost of gas per kilometer and indices for wear and tear. Google, meanwhile, will take a cut of the payment, with the percentage still yet to be determined.
There's good reason for Google to deny it's competing with Uber. Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm, invested $258 million in Uber in August 2013, its largest investment deal ever. What's more, Google’s mapping app, Google Maps, integrates with Uber.
But Google also has good reason to test the limits of challenging the world’s largest ride-hailing company—much of which has to do with Google’s grand ambitions to revolutionize transportation. It’s no secret that the search giant has had a stake in this area for years, especially considering its long-in-development driverless car project.
Google’s autonomous vehicles have already logged thousands of miles on real roads, and the company expects to have a final product by 2020—a mere five years away. And whether Uber likes it or not, this fleet of self-driving cars are a natural fit for Uber-like ride-hailing.
That may be why Uber is putting its (considerable) resources into self-driving car efforts of its own. Back in February, the company announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University’s robotic research group, an initiative the ride-hailing service said was to help it develop driverless-car technology. By late May, according to reports, Uber had actually hired away dozens of Carnegie Mellon’s researchers and scientists, leaving one of the world’s top robotic research institutions in a crisis.
All of which points to a potential face-off between Uber and Google, with both companies looking to bulk up their services while making incremental moves that don’t appear to directly provoke the other. Both Uber and Google would be well-served in keeping their symbiotic relationship intact for as long as possible: Uber depends on Google Maps to route its drivers and riders, while Google receives a pipeline of valuable data—including transportation patterns of cities around the world—from Uber’s continued patronage.
But if Google can prove it doesn’t need Uber to figure out how to offer rides on its own—something the Waze pilot program appears to at least be exploring—it doesn’t have to stick to the alliance. So far, Uber and Google still need each other. But if the signs intimating both companies' grand plans may ultimately clash too much, the one-time allies could be soon poised to become best enemies.
