Technology Alphabet execs Larry Page and Sergey Brin step down; Google CEO Sundar Pichai takes over

Valley Voice - Uber against Google - a duel on the road

Uber and Google have been badly offended. A high-level Google manager must now leave the board of the driving service. In the fight for talent and autonomous driving Uber boss Kalanick switches to attack.

As a jogger in Silicon Valley you run the risk of being run over. Stop signs ignore the people behind the wheel as well as the concept zebra crossing or rear view mirror. Often you just barely get away with it. That's why self-driving cars are a good idea.

Uber is now testing this technology in Pittsburgh on the US East Coast, the first vehicles have already been discovered on the road. The motivation behind this is not primarily the safety of recreational athletes, but economic interest. Uber boss Travis Kalanick wants to cut costs. Soon, robots will navigate vehicles.

The move demonstrates once again that Kalanick wants to achieve the vision of self-driving cars without Google. The Internet company was one of the first investors in his company, until both sides took a public profile.

Recent evidence: Yber reported yesterday that Google manager David Drummond, since 2013 on the board of Uber, his post cleans - with reference to the increased competition. Previously, "The Information" reported that Drummond had been kept away from meetings of the influential controlling body.

Uber against Google - the companies now carry the thing out on the street. On one side is Kalanick, who urgently needs good news. Last half-year burned its expansion rate according to media reports 1.2 billion dollars . There were already another two billion in two years in the Chinese market. The sale of the China business to the competitor Didi may bring closer to the IPO.

But the retreat remains a quirk in the shiny story that Kalanick likes to tell. Uber's valuation of $ 68 billion is now in doubt. Two weeks ago, a judge conceded the agreement with drivers in San Francisco who want to be treated by Uber as employees. Compensation could soon be far higher than the $ 100 million agreed upon earlier.

Kalanick aggressively recruits employees

Many hurdles for Uber lie beyond technology, among legislators and regulators. In Pittsburgh, two professionals behind the wheel will oversee the systems. To what extent the cars are actually autonomous in the almost incalculable inner-city traffic remains to be seen.

The choice of the test location is no coincidence. Uber cooperates with robotics experts from local Carnegie Mellon University. Pioneer Sebastian Thrun, who developed the first autonomous vehicle for Google, spent seven years researching at the university. Chris Urmson, longtime head of Google's Auto Project, studied there. The former head of the robotic department of the university, John Barnes, now works at Uber.

Hardly any other CEO in the Valley currently advertises as aggressively coworkers on Google as Kalanick. He wants to become independent of Google's omnipresent mapping service. Dominik Graf, formerly of Google Maps, where he made the map software iPhone-ready, is now responsible for the complicated mathematics behind Uber's success algorithm, which brings together drivers and passengers and sets the price.

Also Brian McClendon, pioneer of Google Maps, and his colleague Manik Gupta switched to Uber. In August, Google also lost the longtime boss of the team around the autonomous car, Urmson. Former Google employee Alexander Levandowski and three other colleagues founded Otto, which builds autonomous truck technology and was also recently swallowed by Uber.

That was a pretty smart move from Kalanick. He has canceled the cooperation with Google and secures the valuable talents just in other ways. In view of the better predictability of the scenarios for autonomous vehicles on the highway, the technology of start-up Otto should be marketable earlier.

For Google on the other hand, that's bad news. For seven years - as long as Uber exists - the company is already screwing on its self-driving car. It is easy to find frustration with the ambitious Valley technologists when development and market maturity are not progressing fast enough and churn begins.

Perhaps the prospect of stock packages for Uber's IPO is exciting. Maybe it was just annoying the cute colorful office design. In any case, the Uber San Francisco science fiction headquarters, in copper metal and dark wood furniture, feels more like a place where adults work.

Googlers are leaving the group in droves

Despite the apparent forced youth, Google is no longer a start-up, but is celebrating its twenties. Since the spirit can ever get lost. The wanderings between corporations are not uncommon in the Valley, where the war for talent is being waged as hard as anywhere else. But for Google comes the recent development at an inopportune time.

Yes, Google is a technology giant that regularly generates billions in sales. But a new foothold next to the lucrative business with the search is still not in sight. The founding duo Larry Page and Sergey Brin have ordered the corporation with the reform in alphabetical cost control.

Above all, it concerns the "Other Bets", which regularly mete out the consolidated result with a loss of 3.6 billion dollars in 2015 and a further 859 million in the last quarter. In addition to the secret research laboratory X, this includes the project with the driverless car.

The "Other Bets" need more evidence of how billions in investment for shots on the moon products. Since the strategists go out in recent times, the arguments. At X, for example, Google Glass costs went completely out of hand. The once prestigious project is now closed.

Tony Fadell, founder of thermostat maker Nest, also left Google. After the acquisition, it had become quiet about his company. The industry had waited in vain for innovative devices. No wonder that the Googlers fear that the self-driving car could not meet expectations. They change in droves, for example to Uber.

By the way, the Googlers are also migrating to European companies. Airbus CEO Tom Enders, for example, appointed Paul Eremenko Chief Technology Officer of the Airbus Group at the beginning of June. The only 36-year-old aviation specialist had worked at Google and the government-related Darpa initiative.

Airbus announced the development of autonomous helicopters for taxi operations. The first prototype will be tested in 2017. When a product enters the market, that's part of an aerospace company, so far in the stars. But maybe the idea of ​​removing cars completely from the road is the best idea anyway - at least for the endangered joggers.

Every Tuesday, Britta Weddeling, Correspondent of the Handelsblatt in Silicon Valley, writes about new trends and the digital zeitgeist in the Valley of the Nerds.