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0 pointsriskable2y ago0 comments

> Spinning up the legal structure, figuring out all the local regulations and getting permits (it's not 2010 anymore! Many countries and cities regulate ride sharing pretty heavily) in a sane timeline is close to impossible.

This is nonsense. Google has more than enough legal resources to handle this. So much so that it would be nothing more than a regular 3-6 month project that would be assigned a small team of lawyers inside their org. It's no different than any other regionally-regulated product launch at large companies.

Not only that but Google has enough money that they could just hire away some folks that work at Uber/Lyft to get a huge jumpstart on any such project. Even if they didn't need such expertise they'd probably still recruit and hire those people just to be safe; to get the perspective of people with experience.

Big companies have big legal organizations and they don't actually operate that differently from the IT orgs that so many of us on HN are used to. For example, they would probably divide up the task on state-by-state basis with lawyers certified to practice law in each respective state assigned as SMEs or to-be-SMEs. They would do their research and for bigger states they might even have county-level SME lawyers or at the very least paralegals that focus on that particular region. Big cities would probably be assigned their own teams of SME lawyers as well.

It's like any given complex programming task: Divide and conquer. Rolling out a new highly-regulated product across a large region is a highly parallelizeable procedure.

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VanillaCafe2y ago

Evidence suggests that none of this is true. Just look at how Google Fiber wasn't able to navigate the myriad regional regulatory roadblocks thrown up by local governments when lobbied by incumbent ISPs. It's reasonable to expect exactly the same scenario to play out if Google tries to make a competitive ride sharing service from scratch.

endtime2y ago

That's a pretty good example. But in the case of Fiber, part of the problem was that other ISPs own/control infrastructure (like poles) to which they're legally obligated to give competitors access...and they would just not comply, or drag their feet on it. Fiber physically couldn't execute because of this. Of course there was corruption involved, as you pointed out, but in the case of ride share apps I can't immediately think of anything analogous, where Uber could physically prevent Waymo from competing with them.

gnicholas2y ago

Google has tons of legal resources for their current business. But that doesn’t mean they can spin up the legal docs and relationships needed to run an Uber-like business at the drop of a hat. The type of risk that Google’s lawyers are used to mitigating are simply not the same, and their lawyers are for the most part not the type of lawyers that you’d want to set up a transportation company with international operations. There are some relevant lawyers there, but the vast majority are specialized in software/cloud, not wheels-on-the-ground.

Of course, it would be easier to put together the necessary legal structure now that Uber and Lyft have already both done so. It’s easier to be a follower than a leader. But it would still be much harder for Google than building a mobile app like Uber, which would be right up Google’s alley.

panarky2y ago

Google's missing piece isn't the app.

And it isn't the lawyers.

It's the network of riders.

Waymo promised to 10x their scale this year.

Waymo could saturate the territory with empty vehicles waiting for riders on the Waymo app, or it can tap into a fraction of Uber's volume.

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CydeWeys2y ago

> This is nonsense. Google has more than enough legal resources to handle this.

I don't think this is even close to correct. Lawyers were hit especially hard in the January layoffs, way more than 6%, and many teams lost their dedicated lawyers entirely (e.g. my team had one lawyer laid off and the other was reassigned to a basket of products instead of just our own).

willio582y ago

Google has enough resources to in theory thrive in any business they attempt. Yet, they fail in so many businesses they attempt to get into. https://killedbygoogle.com/

hospitalJail2y ago

To be fair, most companies don't even bother trying.

At least we got FOSS chromium + FOSS android.

That said, things like Google Play Music -> Youtube Music was poorly handled and has permanently shook me. Have been leaving Google since.

dragonwriter2y ago

> Big companies have big legal organizations and they don't actually operate that differently from the IT orgs that so many of us on HN are used to.

Well, if you are referring to IT organizations in firms in the tech industry where that’s the core business (i.e., a value center) you are wrong, they are run more like IT orgs in non-tech firms (cost centers), vigorously minimized to be a bit smaller than they should be to handle routine day-to-day needs effectively, with new, emergent, and non-routine work outsourced.

waboremo2y ago

Sure, technically that's correct. But it's google we're talking about. The company with a tremendous list of failures that should have been easy slam dunks.

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