Comment by jnsie
3 days ago
Took a few last year on a trip to San Francisco and it felt like the future. It's not lost on me that enshittification will take its toll, the fleet will get nastier over time, prices will increase, etc. I'm also torn about more money being given to mega corporations. But purely from a service-enjoyment and technology-appreciation point of view it was amazing!
Is it that you feel it's amazing, because San Francisco never had the European-style, cheap and elegant taxi that gets you chaffeured around in a Mercedes E-class by a shirt-wearing, well-dressed person who helps you with your luggage? You can call them with an app.
For me, Waymos are a downgrade in the same way Uber was, too. I'm not even going to expand the conversation to German/Swiss/Dutch-style clean, fast and cheap public transportation. Waymo is basically good public transportation to places which don't have public transportation and don't want it. I have no doubt this comment won't really land with those who have not experienced the European-style taxis or public transportation.
As a European, I never had that either :-)
Though, if the point is that clean/fast/cheap public transportation is the dream, then I unreservedly agree.
I think the lack of any person involved is part of the appeal for a lot of people. The lower cost does also help, I think it will be interesting to see if the notional price advantage from the lack of driver will bear out over time, though.
Enshittification is only when there is a captive/sticky audience that has high switching costs. “Drive you from A to B” has no moat and they will continue to have to compete on merit and price. Here in Vegas there are 3, soon to be 4+, driverless taxi services currently operating.
Also, you can’t praise an amazing service that takes insane amounts of r&d money to bring to market in the same breath as complaining about giving money to massive corporations. No two guys in a garage are starting a self-driving car company or a supersonic jet company by themselves. Massive capital is required to launch satellites, build cars, build datacenters, etc.
>Enshittification is only when there is a captive/sticky audience that has high switching costs. “Drive you from A to B” has no moat and they will continue to have to compete on merit and price.
No, in this case enshittification will be driven by the cost of entry for a new player. That'll create enough of a capital cost hurdle to prevent a duopoly or triopoly-type situation from entering a natural state of complacency and degradation.
How many tens of millions would you be willing to spend to launch your own fleet of self-driving cars in a city (just one for that price! and that's with no R&D!) just because the Waymos are dirty, smelly, and noisy?
Not true. Enshittification also happens when they cut the quality of the service to improve their margins which they need to do for whatever reason (competition on price, profit improvements etc). Thats why the cheapest tier the quality of the vehicles will be worse and all services will run like that because that’s all you can achieve at that price point (unless they figure out how to have automated distributed cleaning stations and even then that’s tricky because the car is still out of commission and losing you money to get cleaned even if it’s only a minor detour).
Enshitification is just price conscious consumers willingly trading quality for price.
If it actually hurt companies they would stop doing it
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