Google and Android Pay are now offering up a deal on rides through the popular ride-hailing service, Uber. For a limited time, if you set up Android Pay as your payment option on Uber, you will be given a 50% discount off of 10 rides between now and October 15.
According to a report this afternoon from The Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to launch a ride sharing service in San Francisco, California later this year to take on rivals Uber and Lyft. The new service is said to bring much cheaper rates in a market that is already intensely competitive. The move also has long-term implications for Google’s self-driving car project…
Update: David Drummond has now stepped down from Uber’s board, according to an Uber statement given to The Information.
In an interesting note from The Information (paywall), we learn that for around a year, Uber has been shutting out its Alphabet board members from board meetings. Google and now Alphabet through its GV arm own a single digit percentage of Uber through early stage investments. That investment also allowed Google to secure a board seat at Uber. That in turn has made a somewhat uncomfortable relationship as Uber **ventures** more into mapping and autonomous driving and Google’s autonomous driving picks up steam, perhaps even for big-rigs.
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With the mass distribution of NFC chips (and even fingerprint readers) in most phones, mobile payments are becoming increasingly popular.
Google‘s own Android Pay — as well as a series of other services, like Samsung‘s — has been live for some time in the US, and it looks like Uber is now sending emails out to customers regarding their own implementation of the payments service…
Uber is beginning to test a new feature that will make it easier for family and other close-knit groups to share an Uber account. That means that your family could use a single credit card for Uber across several devices, making it easy for parents to pay for their kids or other family members, for example.
Google Maps is adding new ride options on mobile devices today as it turns the former Uber-only feature into a section dedicated to several car services. It’s launching today for Android users and coming soon to other platforms.
Facebook today announced it’s rolling out a new feature for its Messenger chat app that will let users book a car through Uber. The feature, it said, expands on other “integrations” it’s added recently outside of the app’s core chat functionality, like the ability to send money or use the app for customer support.
If you use Uber for both business and work, it can be a pain handling the accounting, having to remember to claim the business rides back on expenses. But the service will soon allow you to register a second credit card for business use, and then simply tap your Personal or Business profile in the app to charge the appropriate card.
Look out for an update shortly, when you’ll find Profile in Settings.
Uber added AMBER alerts to its drivers’ app last month.
Via TNW
Uber has announced that it will be sending location-based AMBER alerts to its drivers across all 180 U.S. cities in which it operates, following a successful trial in Colorado.
AMBER alerts provide information on missing children, including description and last known location, so that the public can be on the look out for them. Since the launch of the scheme in 1996, a total of 722 children have been safely found as a direct result of an AMBER alert.
Robert Hoever, director of special programs at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, described the Uber program as “an incredible asset.”
The AMBER Alert program’s success is built on the ability to reach the right people at the right time with these potentially life-saving messages. Uber’s presence in communities all across the country will be an incredible asset and we are proud to team up with Uber to increase the reach of the AMBER Alert program and help bring more missing children home safely.
Apps have proven a powerful addition to the AMBER alerts program, with mobile apps from Facebook and Waze already supporting them. Google added the alerts to search and maps back in 2012.
Via The Verge
StubHub is rolling out an updated version of its Android app today that adds integration with Uber for requesting rides to events.
With the udpated app, users can now request a vehicle directly from within the app when purchasing event tickets or setup a reminder to do so for an upcoming event. Once you’ve booked a ride with Uber, StubHub automatically provides the location of the event venue to the driver:
After completing a ticket purchase on StubHub, fans will now be able to set a reminder to arrange transportation through Uber when the event is imminent. Users who purchase tickets within two hours of the event will be able to order an Uber directly from the order confirmation page.
The Uber integration is available for users in the updated Android StubHub app on Google Play alongside a few other fixes and improvements. The Uber feature, however, is available only for users in the UK, US, and Canada.
While Amazon is experimenting with shipping products by drone and offering two-hour deliveries, Xiaomi is taking a novel approach to delivering its own wares in Singapore and Malaysia. In partnership with Uber, the company will now let customers order their brand new Mi Note smartphone, and have it delivered within a few minutes.
Xiaomi’s chief, Hugo Barra announced the partnership on his Facebook page just a short while ago.
“Ordering a Mi Note follows the exact same process as calling for an Uber — you simply open the Uber app, use the slider at the bottom to select “Xiaomi” (which shows Xiaomi-orange colored Uber cars on the map equipped to deliver the new smartphone), and hit request. Payment will be charged directly to the credit card tied to your Uber account and a Mi Note will be delivered to you within a few minutes.”
It’s hard to think of anything more convenient than being able to place an order for a smartphone with a few taps of your finger, and have it land on your doorstep in the same hour.
Transportation service Uber has hired a longtime mapping expert from Google as the company focuses on boosting its own mapping expertise. As Recode reports, Brian McClendon has left his engineering VP role at Google to oversee Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center. McClendon previously led development for Google Earth and Google Maps and has worked for the company for 10+ years…
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Update: When reached for comment, Google pointed us to its Twitter account’s response (below), which it said is accurate. While it doesn’t directly address the reports, it does seem to hint Google is working on a Lyft-style ride-sharing app and that it doesn’t view it as a direct competitor to Uber. Following the original reports, Uber made its announcement official on its website.
[tweet https://twitter.com/google/status/562392039459807232 align=’center’]
Update 2: Google has reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that the app in question is a carpooling app created by one of its engineers for Google employees. It is said to be unrelated to Google’s self-driving car.
Uber, the app-based car service in which Google is an investor, is about to announce a new investment into building its own fleet of driverless vehicles, according to a report from TechCrunch. Although the specific details are unclear at this point, the report comes just as news breaks that Google is developing its own ride-sharing app that could be a possible competitor to Uber.
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Sprint announced today that it will be adding a new app to its lineup of pre-installed software on “most” new Android phones: Uber. Sprint subscribers new to Uber in the month of December will also get a credit of up to $20 from Sprint to be used on their first ride through the service.
The ridesharing app will now be loaded on new devices from two of the four major US carriers, following AT&T’s similar announcement this summer.
Like it has done in recent years, Google is today displaying its list of top app picks for the year with around 70 apps total receiving the award.
Google has a section on Google Play displaying the “Best Apps of 2014” and in it includes a number of high-profile apps alongside lesser known entrants. The majority of the apps are free, but there are also a few paid offerings like Over, 7 Minute Workout, djay 2, and others. Some of the bigger names on the list include IFTTT, Shazam, Yahoo News Digest, CNN, Uber, and Mailbox.
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Uber has already disrupted taxi service in metropolitan areas like San Francisco, New York and Chicago with its affordable and convenient ride-sharing service, and now the multibillion dollar startup could be planning to use its massive fleet of vehicles and drivers to take on delivery services like Amazon Prime, Google Express, FedEx and UPS.
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The popular transportation service Uber has quickly been growing this year with new features like adding your destination right on the smartphone app when requesting a ride and poaching long time Apple engineering manager Chris Blumenberg who managed the Maps team. The service is even integrated into the Google Maps app on iPhone and Android, and check out the Uber care package the company sends new employees.
Today Uber is taking a major step toward integrating its service into even more apps and services as it introduces an API for developers to use in their own apps and a list of partners already planning to take advantage of it.
As of today, we officially open—to all developers—access to many of the primitives that power Uber’s magical experience. Apps can pass a destination address to the Uber app, display pickup times, provide fare estimates, access trip history and more.
Uber announced today that it’s added new features that will make the experience even more seamless for both users and its drivers.
We envision a day when there is no coordination necessary to take an Uber ride. Simply push the button, and the rest is essentially on cruise control: the car quickly shows up at exactly the right place and whisks you away to your destination via the best possible route. The latest rider and driver app releases take us one step closer to that world with two new features:
A new destination entry feature lets users quickly enter destination details into the Uber app that are then automatically available to the driver when they arrive. “You can literally skip the step where you tell the driver where you’re going.”
Uber has also added turn-by-turn navigation to its driver app: With one tap, the driver can enable turn-by-turn navigation to the destination you’ve provided. There’s no need to juggle multiple apps or waste time typing in an address.
Uber says the features are live now, although doesn’t list the features in the latest update that hit the app yesterday.
Uber, the app-based car service that Google recently sunk $250M into via its Google Ventures investment arm, today announced that its cars in Philadelphia this summer will have free WiFi courtesy of Google. Google also made an announcement on its own blog noting that the initiative is sponsored by Google Apps for Businesses, the online suite of productivity tools that Google hopes users in the back of the new WiFi-equipped Uber vehicles will take advantage of.
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Google announced on its blog today a big update coming to Google Maps on both Android and iOS including integration with Uber.
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Google Ventures’ $250M investment in Uber makes a lot more sense with some news reported by Jessica Lessin this morning. The site is reporting that Google is making its own driverless cars to be “robo taxis”:
Google Inc., which has been working on software to help major automakers build self-driving cars, also is quietly going around them by designing and developing a full-fledged self-driving car, according to people familiar with the matter.
While the Prius has been Google’s main guinea pig of the self-driving car efforts, it looks like Google would like to control the entire manufacturing experience for these cars. In addition, the company’s focus is geared towards driver-free taxi services rather than selling the cars direct to consumers.
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According to a report from AllThingsD, Google’s investment arm, Google Ventures, just invested around $250 million into Uber, the private car delivery service that lets users order vehicles through mobile apps. The investment comes as Uber raises $360 million at a valuation of around $3.5B:
Though pricey, the latest scramble to be in the Uber funding round was apparently very competitive. Sources said Google won the investment because of direct intervention by CEO Larry Page, who met with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
While it would be a bit stretch to guess what plans Google might have for Uber down the road, there are a few Google services in development that could benefit. Some have speculated that Uber could help power a future driverless car service from Google, but perhaps more realistic for the short term would be deliveries. Since last year Google has been testing a same-day delivery service in and around San Francisco, and it reportedly planned to use driverless cars to do so.
