I agree with "who is this for" but to be fair to Google's example, the most common use I see of AI for "normal people" besides chat/homework is creating event/business posters and small business promo graphics. The kind of stuff that used to be a Canva template, can now be created quicker/easier with an AI prompt. I agree it's a super-lame use for AI, but the average person's use-cases for AI as it exists now are still very limited (IMHO).
FTA: "SpaceX has done a lot of engineering work to make its Starlink satellites fainter. They are still too bright for research astronomy, but thanks to new coatings, their brightness has not increased dramatically even as SpaceX has launched larger and larger satellites."
I acknowledge there's an issue here, but I don't think it makes sense to label it "pollution". When something is polluted it generally means using it can lead to some form of harm, directly or indirectly. I fail to see how confusing satellites for stars stars causes harm, per se (though of course it would suck to be an astronomer).
Starlink constellations will lead to a world where there is absolutely nowhere you can go where you cant see man-made junk. No truly pristine wilderness anywhere without being able to see formations of glowing dots helping "off-grid" idiots stream Netflix. It's spiritually harmful if nothing else.
Also who said pollution has to be harmful? Light pollution is a thing, and this is the same class of problem.
Why dont they dip the satellites in vantablack to make them truly invisible?
There are those who would disagree on the existence of a "spirit", and so immediately invalidate that argument.
Light pollution is borderline, but actually acceptable is it does cause harm. It disrupts sleep quality and sleeping patterns, also generally affecting plants and animals negatively.
You argument seems to hinge on Starlink not being a massive improvement to how non-broadband connected folk get internet. Your crusade against "offgrid" idiots is intentionally dense as it ignores the millions of people who will be able to access the internet.
No it still relates to the cameras. When you hook up incompetence with automation bad things happen quickly an in far great numbers. Incompetence alone, if isolated or kept from spreading viraly is far less damaging.
Came here to say basically this. Your company website is not for you, but your personal website should be. I spent years chasing Google traffic and useless business goals for my own blog until I realized I should publish for me, not the users.
And if I do something that Google doesn't like... who cares? It's for me and Google will come crawling (literally) back anyways.
Currently I use my blog as a bookmarking service. Instead of a browser bookmark, I built a Chrome extension that simply posts the link to my blog as a new post where it's public, and easily discoverable from any device BY ME!
I wonder how long Google will continue to subsidize this at a substantial loss? Estimated $30–40 billion spent in the last decade that only really pays off if they dominate the market.
So one year of revenue buys ~2500 cars at those prices, which is roughly the size of their fleet (~3000 according to Wikipedia). It seems plausible that newer cars will be cheaper as designs get optimized, economies of scale hit and what used to be really expensive cutting-edge hardware becomes commoditized and goes down in cost over time.
They certainly also need support including contractors that assist cars that get need human input, maintenance etc. and the electricity for the cars isn't free either, but just based on these numbers, it sounds like they are likely close to being profitable if you ignore R&D.
If you assume $10 a ride, and a car giving 3 rides an hour for 12 hours a day, that's $360 in revenue per car per day, close to the $320 you'd get from $350M/3000/365. That means each car pays for itself in about a year (ignoring all other costs, of course).
Based on this and the assumption that cars last for more than 2 years, I'd guess that Waymo is only "unprofitable" (not sure how this works in accounting terms) due to ongoing R&D and expansions and there really isn't much more to "subsidize".
I don't believe Google breaks it down but everyone assumes Waymo accounts for roughly 50% of $7.52B in "other bets" losses. And that's just 2025, losses in Q4 2025 are almost 2x Q4 2024. Cost factors are improving but they continue to shovel money into the R&D furnace.
I bet they've hit operating breakeven a couple years ago. If they hadn't they wouldn't have been expanding. Expanding while you have an operating loss means the loss would be expanding alongside the service. I'm not seeing that in the numbers.
They have the money to do so, and investors are aware that it is a long term play. Waymo is already dominating the market for all intents and purposes.
I don't think Waymo needs to dominate the market to succeed. They just need to scale up (time)x(number of vehicles) enough to amortize the R&D costs of the self driving capability. Paying a driver is a big chunk of a taxi/Uber's costs, so eliminating that leaves a lot of room to maneuver.
Having lived on military bases that is a false sense of security. That's one gate guard away from a problem. They make mistakes. There are far better options he can afford.
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