Google has decided to take its self-driving car technology and put it toward establishing a brand new company called Waymo. The new company is going to be owned under Google's parent company which is Alphabet . Google has already spent several years, and millions of dollars, in trying to develop this self-driving car technology.
The driverless car market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years and Google, along with Uber, Tesla, and many others, are looking to carve out a big piece of the pie for themselves in the market. The move to form the company around the technology that they have developed over the years, shows the market that Google is well beyond just the research phase of the technology and they are ready to bring it to full commercialization.
There are still billions of cars in the world and only thousands of self-driving cars that are being shipped every year, so we still have a long way to go before we see a majority of the cars on the road being operated by self-driving technology. But it's clear that we can expect many of those cars will be associated with Google, seeing as they are one of the biggest players in this tech space.
Just this year, Google also managed to strike a deal with Fiat Chrysler, to incorporate their self-driving technology into at least 100 Pacifica minivans, in the hope that it will make it easier for this technology to be installed on a commercial assembly line. Google themselves (and Waymo) as many know, are not in the business of manufacturing cars, they are invested in technology, and so pairing this tech with already well-developed car companies is going to be a much healthier strategy for them.
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Sources:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-alphabet-forms-new-driverless-car-company-1481650433
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38309834
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/technology/google-parent-company-spins-off-waymo-self-driving-car-business.html
http://www.popsci.com/google-self-driving-car-driverless-vehicle