yes, waze had 100M+ users and still failed to have a successful launch with waze carpool. part of the problem is Google is too successful. If a business makes USD 10M a year and takes up a month worth of attention every year from the Alphabet CEO, they will probably shut it down before we can say Google Product Graveyard.
consumer expectations are much higher than 13 years ago and that's not going to cut it.
another big deal is gps accuracy in cities, which is a pretty non trivial problem but at this point a consumer expectation https://www.uber.com/blog/rethinking-gps/
Not sure this particular one would affect Waymo if they were going it alone, since their rollout to each service area would involve designation of pickup & drop off points at airports and collaboration with airports, which they'll have to do either way, but it's definitely a significant difference between Uber 2010 & 2023.
If Google was to enter a market at a loss in an effort to use its market dominance in Android to drive out a competitor that would potentially be something that would be considered anticompetitive and US regulators would likely be interested in it.
I don't believe that Google can compete with Uber losing money as it is nor that Google has an appetite for purchasing the necessary vehicles and maintaining them outside of a few test cities for a technology demo. Having driverless taxis also means that they would need to do a better job with end user support (compare the urgency of "help, I'm locked out of my email" and their current resolution time to "help, I'm locked in a car and can't get out!").
LOLOLOL
