Google's self-driving car project has been burning money for eight years, and the idea seems to keep changing.

As a star technology company, Google's every move always attracts the attention of the industry. Google, which has made too much money from Internet advertising, has been hoping to turn some so-called "moonshot projects" into reality after becoming Alphabet. Google Glass and driverless cars are typical representatives of these projects. With sufficient capital support and strong technical strength, even "moonshot projects" do not seem so far-fetched in Google's eyes. Google just exerts its public relations influence a little bit, and almost all the media and users around the world are crazy about it.

But Google's planned "moon landing" success seems to have never been realized. After the market failure of Google Glass, there has been little media coverage. After the round of promotion of Project Loon three years ago, there has been no news for quite a long time. This is how the technology venture capital industry is, constantly burning money, constantly blowing bubbles, and constantly failing until success comes.

Google's driverless car project has been going on for almost eight years, and the person in charge has changed several times. It was first affiliated with Google X, then X Company, and was spun off and renamed Waymo at the end of last year. But until now, we still don't have a timetable for Waymo's final mass production, and there are only news released from public relations. The latest development is: Waymo decided to develop sensors, radars, cameras and software by itself, and claimed that it has greatly reduced product costs.

Later, the media discussed whether Waymo would become a supplier to other car manufacturers. Another media discussed when Waymo would set up its own driverless team. However, when Google spun off the driverless project in December last year, it was concluded that Google spun off the project because it could not build cars or operate a team. Now, these questions about how Waymo will do the driverless business seem to have started again.

What’s even more interesting is that the company’s CEO John Krafcik publicly clarified in an interview with the media: "Waymo is not a car manufacturer. We don’t want to produce cars. We want to design better drivers." To be honest, I think Waymo might as well use Faraday Future’s (or LeTV Auto’s) rhetoric of "eco-car" and "new species". The effect might be better.

The "moon landing project" certainly sounds exciting, but the biggest problem is that many times before the "moon landing", people just do it without thinking it through - after all, there is plenty of money to burn and plenty of time to do technical research and development, so what's there to be afraid of? In fact, it has long been reported that Google Glass and driverless cars were once just personal hobbies of Google's founders. Unfortunately, no one can combine personal taste and judgment of electronic products with the consumer market like Jobs did, and launch truly disruptive products like the iPhone.

Geeks’ “toys” are often only fun for geeks.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.