I watched a Google exec at a meeting once say "people are always mystified by Google but our basic business model is to find a market segment with excess profit and then eliminate all competition by operating at break-even." That's what's going to happen here: Google has figured out that there's no particular reason why someone else should profit from you sharing your car with another person. They'll do to Uber what they did to Groupon: acknowledge that the company operates as an artificial barrier between consumers and vendors and nuke the business from orbit. The fact that Uber created the market segment a few short years ago really doesn't matter to them.
Isn't that Amazon's basic business model as well?I watched a Google exec at a meeting once say "people are always mystified by Google but our basic business model is to find a market segment with excess profit and then eliminate all competition by operating at break-even."