Uber and Google, Ride-Sharing ‘Frenemies’:;

         Uber plans to start testing self-driving Uber cars in Pittsburgh next month Credit Jared Wickerham/Associated Press 
 

Silicon Valley is a bit like junior high school. Sometimes friends become enemies. Enemies become friends. And “frenemies” stay somewhere in between — just don’t share a secret with them.

So it is with Alphabet, Google’s parent company and arguably the most influential company in the tech industry, and Uber, the still young ride-hailing service that also happens to be one the most valuable privately held companies in the world.

On Monday, Uber announced that David Drummond had recently stepped down from its board after serving on it for three years. The tech news site The Information reported that Mr. Drummond, a longtime Google executive, had been prohibited from attending some directors’ meetings and from learning some company secrets, given the growing tension between the companies.

On Tuesday, reports surfaced that Google was inching closer to becoming an Uber competitor. For some time, Google has been testing a ride-sharing service near its headquarters, in Mountain View, Calif. Soon that program is expected to expand to San Francisco.      

There may have been a time when Google and Uber were friends. GV, the current name of Alphabet’s investment arm, invested in Uber, after all. Uber certainly benefited from working with Google’s mobile operating system, and it has long used Google’s maps (though it is working on its own now).

But somewhere along the way, the two started to drift apart. Google has been working on a self-driving-car project for years and has been testing the vehicles on the streets of Silicon Valley. Last year, Uber hired some of the best minds in the autonomous-vehicle world from Carnegie Mellon University and created its own self-driving-car research center.

And last week, Uber acquired a self-driving-truck start-up founded and heavily populated by — you guessed it — former Google employees. To top it off, Uber plans to start testing self-driving Uber cars in Pittsburgh next month.

Google has a history of executives who serve on the boards of companies that could soon be competitors, of course. Eric E. Schmidt, Alphabet’s executive chairman, was a member of Apple’s board when his company was developing Android, a direct competitor to the Apple iPhone. Steve Jobs, legend has it, was not very happy about it.

So perhaps that junior high lesson stands: Watch what you say around your frenemies.

 By: JIM KERSTETTER

COMMENT AND SHARE........................................................ 

Share And Comment Bellow On What You Think About This Post!!!