Google's Self-Driving Taxi Service to Rival Uber

Google announced a major re-branding strategy in August this year by creating an overseeing parent company called Alphabet. The underlying premise behind the creation of Alphabet was that a larger parent company would help streamline operations for Google as well as enable the company to keep its focus. This would also allow many of its future-tech companies to become separate entities themselves and allow for better management. The self-driving car project that Google has been developing, is likely to become a separate firm under Alphabet next year.

As reported by Bloomberg's source, the fleet of small and large self-driving vehicles will then be deployed on a smaller scale in confined areas like college campuses, military bases or corporate office parks to check the viability of the technology based on consumer testing and feedback. The concept vehicles have already logged over 1.6 million kms on public roads surrounding San Francisco and Austin, Texas during their initial testing phase.

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Thilo Koslowski, Vice President and Automotive Practice Leader at Gartner Inc., commented on how despite 1 in 3 American consumers being interested in buying autonomous cars in the future, most are afraid of the concept not functioning properly and thereby losing control of the vehicle. He went on to say, "These potential ride-for-hire services could allow consumers to experience the technology and embrace it in a bigger way. That would help not just Google but the entire industry."

Newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, John Krafcik, spearheads the autonomous car project initiated by Google X. Despite the company staying mute regarding the creation of a stand-alone autonomous car company, Krafcik did reveal that Google had the lead over its competitors in the said space. If and once it's functional, Alphabet's autonomous taxi service's main rival will be Uber, a private taxi company that has raised over $10 billion in private markets. Both companies are striving to launch autonomous car-for-hire services to help reduce road accidents caused by human error.