siminoff:

This is so freaking awesome.  I have a TON of respect for Mike Hudack, but to his comment of “Is this really what Google should be doing to maximize shareholder value?” I say f-u to shareholder value and lets look at the value that these guys are creating for the US by by building the future.

Thank you Larry and Sergey!

mikehudack:

Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.

So we have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves. Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.

I honestly can’t decide if this is cool or not. Is this really what Google should be doing to maximize shareholder value?

It occurs to me that we will have greater time to surf the web & click ads if our cars drive for us :) So win-win I say.

(Source: soupsoup)