[snarf]

I think Alphabet probably views Waymo as their next big thing, and Waymo appears to have a sizable lead over everyone else in the self driving space which they want to protect. Remember, Alphabet is a major investor in Uber through Google Ventures, and their stake is likely worth billions. They wouldn't pursue this unless Waymo was of critical importance to them.

[argonaut]

I get that a lot of people on HN are highly skeptical, but Google Ventures claims to be completely firewalled from Google corporate (this issue is only made more confusing by the fact that Google Capital is not firewalled, and by the fact that Google corporate itself also invests in companies).

I do believe them: many media firms have the same set up between the journalism and advertising departments.

[snarf]

GV may make decisions and operate completely independently from the rest of Alphabet, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Alphabet does not take into account GV's portfolio position in Uber, which is its largest investment. Waymo even hints as much in its Medium post: "Our parent company Alphabet has long worked with Uber in many areas, and we didn’t make this decision lightly."

[sah2ed]

In practice, when it comes to outside investments, I don't think the artificial separation between Google Ventures (GV), Google Capital (Capital G) and Google Corporate matters that much.

FWIW, David Drummond, longtime Chief Legal Officer took a board seat after GV's $250m investment in Uber in 2013 but eventually stepped down last August [0].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/technology/google-self-dr...