What Is Waymo Doing with Lyft?

Lyft and Waymo just announced an exciting but vague self-driving car partnership that further complicates the mobility ecosystem.

According to The New York Times:

“Details about the deal between Waymo and Lyft were scant. The companies declined to comment on what types of products would be brought to market as a result of it or when the public might see the fruits of the collaboration.”

Basically, there’s a deal but nobody knows what’s in it.

The big tease, of course, is that Waymo would put its self-driving cars on Lyft’s network.

That would be totally awesome, but somewhat at odds with past indications of Waymo’s plans for commercializing its self-driving technology.

Previously, Waymo has appeared to be launching a ride-sharing service, then a lidar manufacturing business, and now possibly a self-driving car operation (without owning the actual ride-sharing service). At other points, people have speculated that Waymo might try to make its software the default tech stack of autonomous vehicles, similar to what Android has become for mobile phones.

Or maybe they’ll buy Lyft.