Comment by dotBen

Comment by dotBen 11 hours ago

14 replies

View on Hacker News

They already will be selling your ride data and there is no way they could monitor conversations in the car for commercial purposes (at least in Western countries).

Ads in cars, partnerships with alternative destinations, etc. definitely would feel like enshitification for a demographic comparable to the hacker news one here. But these are all per session/user settings just like most of us have a paid Spotify account and never see advertising and those who don't get a very different monetized experience.

What is exciting about monetization like this is the possibility for rides to become very cheap or even free. If my dentist offers free rides to the office in return for my loyalty, I'm quite happy to take that.

crazygringo 10 hours ago

> If my dentist offers free rides to the office in return for my loyalty, I'm quite happy to take that.

That's actually a really interesting angle. The same way businesses often provide free parking now... what if they start providing free self-driving round trips?

E.g. spend $75 or more at Whole Foods, and get free round-trip up to 20 miles or something. Especially for bulky items like groceries where a car makes a big difference, I can totally see that becoming standard. Home Depot too. Plus entertainment like amusement parks, movie theaters, spas...

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  • dotBen 10 hours ago

    It makes particular sense for vertically integrated conglomerates like Amazon-Whole Foods which owns Zoox.

    I buy Whole Foods French fries shipped to the store via Amazon logistics and purchase those at Amazon owned Whole Foods, at a discount via my Prime membership on my Amazon credit card which is processed on AWS infrastructure and I ride home on an Amazon owned Zoox that also runs on AWS infrastructure.

    Amazon owns so much of the profit margin across that stack that they can afford to give rides away for example.

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jafo1989 9 hours ago

> there is no way they could monitor conversations in the car for commercial purposes (at least in Western countries)

Oh, you'll agree to that when you accept the terms of service.

Can't wait for the "This ride with ads: $17. Ad free: $26" choice.

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GuinansEyebrows 11 hours ago

> there is no way they could monitor conversations in the car for commercial purposes (at least in Western countries)

people used to feel that way about search queries, email (gmail) and IP laws (LLM training).

> What is exciting about monetization like this is the possibility for rides to become very cheap or even free. If my dentist offers free rides to the office in return for my loyalty, I'm quite happy to take that.

this won't happen. alphabet will collect on both ends.

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tapoxi 11 hours ago

Couldn't Uber do that today?

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  • dotBen 11 hours ago

    /cries into my Uber shares and the deletion of the Uber ATG repos when the parts were sold to Aurora.

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lotsofpulp 11 hours ago

> and there is no way they could monitor conversations in the car for commercial purposes (at least in Western countries).

Why not? You can consent to having your audio recorded. They can even offer a higher “private” price and a lower “ad supported” price. I write “private” because I assume the microphones will always be listening no matter which price you pay.

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  • dotBen 11 hours ago

    I guess that's semantics. If you opt in then yes I guess they could do anything. I think the point was that enshitification would occur if they forced you to do that.

    You could opt in to have blood or plasma taken on every ride if you so wanted I guess.

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    • tantalor 9 hours ago

      Rough figures:

      As a plasma donor you can earn $30-$70 per session for 800 ml. Let's call it $50. A session takes about 90 minutes, or 533 ml/hour, and you make $33/hour

      Waymo charges $0.50 - $1.00 per mile. Let's use the high end.

      To break even, your Waymo will need to consume < $33/hour, or < 33 mph. That's not bad!

      If you go any faster, you won't be able to extract enough plasma in the same amount of time.

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notyourwork 11 hours ago

You really think ads in vehicle are not coming? You’re being naive if you think that.

Also, cheap rides cut into stocks margins. That won’t fly by investors either. These companies are not charities. They are in the business of maximizing profits. We lost “don’t be evil” over a decade ago.

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  • tantalor 10 hours ago

    We already have ads in vehicles.

    If you fly United, the in-flight entertainment has pre-roll ads.

    I can't say how well that model translates to car rides.

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    • oefrha 10 hours ago

      I see you haven’t seen or heard of cabs’ in-car ad screens we’ve had for close to two decades, if you have to point to airplanes as an example.

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      • tantalor 9 hours ago

        I haven't been in a cab in 2 decades, so that tracks.

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