Alphabet revealed that its “other bets” division which includes Waymo alongside like Verily and Fiber continued to bleed money
View PhotosWaymos is said to be the pioneer of self driving cars
The pioneering self-driving company Waymo which branched out of Google’s moonshot division Google X is considered to be the most sophisticated self-driving platform in the world. That being said, in the last couple of years while self-driving technology has achieved massive improvements, it is yet to be perfected. This is why in the last year many players have dumped their self-driving efforts. But Alphabet-owned Google marches on with Waymo. In its Q1 2021 earnings report, Alphabet revealed that its “other bets” division which includes Waymo alongside long term moon shot projects like Verily and Fiber continued to bleed money at the search giant.
This news comes after ride-sharing service Lyft offloaded its self-driving car unit to Toyota owned Woven months after its chief rival Uber had done the same with the ATG unit. Uber had sold off ATG to Aurora a self-driving car startup founded by Waymo’s former boss Chris Urmson.
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Now, in the latest quarter which was a very healthy one for Alphabet, other bets, just pulled in $198 million in revenue and reported a massive loss of $1.15 billion which was more than what it was a year ago. It should also be noted most of the revenue was raked in by Verily and Fiber, not Waymo.
Overall, Alphabet had revenues of $55.3 billion out of which $17.9 billion was just profit which was a Q1 record for the search giant. Now, Alphabet is not Uber or Lyft – it is a mega-corporation. It can keep pouring money into Waymo. Waymo has also started raising money. Earlier in the month, Waymo also lost its CEO John Krafick who has left for “new adventures”.
Sunder Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet in December 2019 after the founders of Google stepped down
But under Alphabet’s ruthless CFO Ruth Porat, no business is safe. Other bets lost project loon earlier this year which had been attempting to beam wireless internet through balloons since 2013. The project was shut despite it making many strides.
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Waymo is now a full company on its own. It was also a special pet project of the Google founders. It is also a pioneer in a space that Google invented and now is being pursued by almost every major car company. If anything, one can expect Waymo to double down on its efforts.
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