[nthuser]

> Alphabet is doing all of these things and more though no? With more much success too from what I can garner.

Apple has more diversified revenue than Alphabet. Why would you say Alphabet is more successful?. All this tells me is that Apple thinks long and hard before publicizing what it's working on, they won't show us prototypes.

> Waymo is the defacto number one leader in self-driving, whereas Apple’s self driving unit is having huge issues internally with getting anything done.

ALL of Apple's reported problems had to do with the MAKING of a car, not autonomous systems. People just don't get this distinction. We will know how far their system is at the end of this month when the DMV releases their disengagement report. By the way, recent developments indicate that Apple is back to building an electric self-driving car instead of a self-driving platform.

[sah2ed]

> By the way, recent developments indicate that Apple is back to building an electric self-driving car instead of a self-driving platform.

This is the correct approach, yet a lot of people still haven’t internalized this subtle distinction.

For a self-driving platform to deliver on the promise of being more reliable than a human driver, it has to constantly monitor two environments: its internal environment and its external environment, but most discussions dwell on the external.

External environment failure in the worst case scenario can lead to loss of life. OTOH, internal environment failure can lead to internal inconsistency and in the worst case, a machine shutdown; but because cars share the road with other road users, a sudden failure in one car can lead to multiple car accidents and in a worst case scenario, several lives lost. In a way, the failure outcomes are identical.

An electric car is far less complex than an ICE car meaning there are fewer moving parts and subsystems whose state needs to be kept track of constantly. This is where electric drivetrains hold a lot of promise: a low complexity machine can be made more reliable at a lower cost than a high complexity machine.

[partingshots]

So far I’ve listed Waymo and Verily.

What about,

Loon - https://loon.co/

Dandelion - https://dandelionenergy.com/

Wing - https://x.company/wing/

Chronicle - https://chronicle.security/

Malta - https://blog.x.company/introducing-malta-81bceb559061

Apple is almost 100% definitively not working on a molten salt energy storage solution I can promise you. And the reason is because it’s just not in it’s corporate structure or culture. Far too constrained / trapped in it’s niche to expand outwards into such a vastly different market.

[sharcerer]

And you didn't even mention GV, CapitalG and other investment arms. Well forget the others, I am surprised that Google's investments into Oscar, Magic Leap, SpaceX, Impossible, Slack, Stripe,Lyft,Uber, Snap, AirBnb aren't talked about much. I think these can be counted as successful, guaranteed future cash troves. In 10 years, all these are going to be worth a lot. Google should hold onto these. It's like a mini Berkshire hathaway is brewing up.

Some links: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/a-peek-inside-alphabets-in... http://www.gv.com/portfolio/ https://capitalg.com/companies/

[scarface74]

And none of these are profitable.

A “successful” product for a profit making company is one that makes money.....

Google hasn’t shown an ability to ptofitably sell anything but ads.

According to numbers that came out during the Oracle lawsuit, even Android has only made Google $31 Billion since its inception.

[nthuser]

Again, Apple has a more diversified revenue stream than Alphabet and it is growing. Contrary to what you are trying to imply, Apple is actually more successful than Alphabet. The difference is they don't tell the world about their internal projects.

[deanCommie]

> Malta’s solution is to store electricity as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed. The key insight behind Malta is that electricity can be stored as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed.

Does nobody proof read these things before they get published?