Spinning up a messaging app without a compelling differentiation is hard. It's much easier with a compelling differentiation. Waymo could just set prices at half of Uber and boom instant market share.
Using Google's dominance to expand into other sectors (at a loss) is a perfect example of anticompetitive practices that regulators would likely take a keen interest in investigating.
Using Android's market share to push or encourage the use of a Waymo robot taxi booking application that is in competition with Uber and Lyft might be seen as anticompetitive.
Other comments elsewhere are "No but if you're Google you can put it on literally every android phone quite quickly." and "All Google would need to do is push a notification to every Android phone that has Google Maps (so, all of them) that says "book your next trip through Google maps and the first ten rides are free!" and they're in business."
That sort of approach would very likely be examined by regulators.
Followed by a slap on the wrist of a fine? How many tens of millions of dollars do you think the TAM of NYC taxi service is, vs a single digit million dollar fine from regulators?
Most days, fines are just the cost of doing business. They cut into your profits, sure, but as long as profits >> fine, just pay the fine and keep doing it.
Instant market share if they're willing to lose 2x the money that Uber is losing. It's not like drivers are going to be falling over themselves to sign up if it's a 50% paycut.
