Alphabet and Uber are inching closer to a showdown.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is broadening the scope of a carpooling program that could challenge ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. The pilot programme, operated through Google's navigation app Waze, is limited to employees of companies near Google's headquarters in Mountain View.
In the fall, Waze plans to expand the program to users in San Francisco, where Uber is based, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorised to speak publicly about it.
Waze promotes the service as Waze Carpool on its website, recruiting drivers and riders to commute together in the Bay Area. For now, Google is not pushing the service as a direct competitor to the taxilike services of Uber and Lyft, focusing mainly on matching drivers and riders already headed in the same direction.
Unlike ride services that summon drivers immediately, Waze suggests calling for a ride a few hours in advance. When a user wants a ride in the same direction, Waze offers the driver a price to pick up that passenger.
For now, Waze is keeping the cost of rides below the federal standard mileage rates of 54 cents a mile, making it impractical for drivers to make a living from driving. Under its terms of service, Google said it may deduct "a commission" from the price of the ride.
Representatives of Google and Uber declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on Waze's expansion of its pilot programme.
Google's expansion of the program is another indication of the intensifying competition between the two companies. As the company toes the waters of the ride-hailing industry, Uber has made clear its intentions to break into autonomous vehicle technology, a longtime area of interest for Google and its self-driving car experimentation. Next month, Uber plans to start its first pilot program of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, home to the ride-hailing firm's autonomous technology research efforts.
Once close allies, the two companies in recent months have taken steps to disentangle themselves from each other. David Drummond, Alphabet's senior vice president of corporate development, announced he had stepped down from Uber's board as overlap increased between the two companies. Drummond had joined Uber's board as a director in 2013 when he led a $258 million investment in Uber through GV, then called Google Ventures, the investment arm of Alphabet.
Uber has also signaled its intentions to develop its own mapping technology, an effort to decrease the company's heavy reliance on Google Maps for navigation.
And earlier this month it acquired Otto, an autonomous technology start-up, to kick-start its self-driving efforts in Pittsburgh.
Along with some of the changes of the last month, Uber also announced on Tuesday that it had hired Jeff Jones, former chief marketing officer at Target, to be Uber's new president of ride-sharing.
© 2016 The New York Times News Service
SHOWDOWN ON THE ROAD
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Alphabet is broadening the scope of a carpooling programme that could challenge ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft
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The pilot programme is operated through Google's navigation app Waze
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In the fall, Waze plans to expand the programme to users in San Francisco, where Uber is based
- Uber has made clear its intentions to break into autonomous vehicle technology, a longtime area of interest for Google and its self-driving car experimentation
