Google spins off self-driving car division, signalling new direction

Google's self-driving cars have graduated from the company's "moonshot division", X labs, to become a full-blown subsidiary of umbrella group Alphabet, called Waymo. The new company, headed by X alumni John Krafcik, is charged with turning the self-driving car technology that Google has been developing behind closed doors into a viable business for the future. How that will actually happen, though, Waymo has apparently not yet decided. Mooted revenue streams include Uber-style driverless ride sharing, disrupting the trucking and logistics sector, fitting self-driving technology into public transit vehicles, improving the "last mile" of postal delivery or even simply licensing the software to car manufacturers who will sell cars to end users. "Self-driving technology is awesome in all these categories," said Krafcik at an event to announce the launch of Waymo.