People buy/use products that do a valued ‘job’ for the. For example, you buy a knife because it cuts vegetables faster that you would otherwise. You use an app like Yelp because it does the ‘job’ of recommending the right business near you.

So let’s take a valued ‘job’ that all us ‘hire’ different products for today.
The job of getting from place A to place B when we can’t or do not want to drive. Typical ‘services’ you would ‘hire’/pay today for this job would be things like public transportation, taxis, rental cars, uber/lyft, ask friends or family. This is the current landscape of competition that any new service would have to compete again for our business. Some criteria you might use to assess which service to take would include things like: cost, safety, reliability, speed and convenience/luxury.

Ideal Scenario: Now imagine this: It’s 5 pm in the evening and you get a notification that your ride is outside your office[1]. You get into the car and it already know where you’re going — the airport, and the airline you are taking[2]. Once you settle in, you ask it to play a playlist you like which it promptly does[4]. It informs you it’s going to take a little detour because the usual highway route has heavy traffic and gives you an expected time of arrival[6]. You sit back and close your eyes listening to your favourite songs which is only interrupted once to take a message from your fiance wishing you safe travels[8]. You reach the airport and your account is automatically charged[3]. Fast-forward, 4 hours and you arrive in New York. You get out of the airport and the moment you step out to the curb your ride is there waiting for you[9, 10]. You get into the car, and it resumes the movie right where you left it in the airplane[12]. The driver informs you, there’s a very popular mediterranean restaurant on the way, and if you’d like to stop there[14]. You agree and after a lovely dinner at the restaurant reach your hotel.

All the capabilities followed by an even number in square brackets e.g. [2, 4] are things Google applications can do fairly well, if not as well as described above. Think or an integration of maps, waze, Google Now, Gmail, and Google play. All the ones in odd numbers are things Uber does today. There are some very interesting scenarios which those services working together do very well [odd, even].

Now, some of you astute readers may have already imagine this but if not , imagine now, your car was driverless and the driver above was just software! All the pieces are starting to fit in neatly!

On any of the above criteria that we chose for the job: cost, safety, reliability, speed and convenience/luxury, such a solution has the ability to blow the existing competition out of the water and then some. What’s more is that some of these are formed from unique positions the companies (especially Google) are in and provide a wide moat to prevent any competitors from being a serious threat — in particular, Google Maps, Google Now and the self-driving cars. Also, conveniently enough Google Ventures is already a large investor in Uber having invested $258 million.

In addition, there are other associated unique strategic advantages which would make this scenario even more enticing for Google if it wasn’t a home run already. My next blog post will go into more of those strategic advantages and why they would further increase Google’s competitive advantage and position it even more strongly to disrupt and revolutionize that entire space.

Disclaimer: All thoughts expressed here are solely mine and and do not reflect the views of my employer or any other individual/organization associated with me. This is purely an exercise in analysis of user experience and business strategy that I did for my enjoyment. The information here is not meant to provide any legal, financial or such advice and you use any information here at your own risk. Scary disclaimer over ☺ Please link back to the post with the right attribution if you do end up posting it somewhere.