The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

by Brad Stone

So one evening in August 2013, Kalanick checked into a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in East Palo Alto, paid for by Google, and woke up the next morning for a ten o’clock meeting with the most powerful man in Silicon Valley. Krane had orchestrated an experience that would blow Kalanick’s mind. When Uber’s CEO came down to the lobby, a prototype driverless car from the Google X lab idled in front of the hotel, waiting to ferry him to Mountain View. Sitting in the front seat was a Google engineer who could answer all his questions. It was Kalanick’s first ride in a self-driving car on real roads. At the Google campus, Kalanick met with Page, Google senior lawyer David Drummond, and Krane’s boss at GV at the time, Bill Maris. Page assured Kalanick that the companies could work together to develop Google Maps, which Uber relied on for navigation in its apps, but he didn’t say much or stay very long. The more important legacy that day was Kalanick’s developing awareness of the technology that might radically change Uber’s business. “The minute your car becomes real, I can take the dude out of the front seat,” Kalanick told Krane excitedly after the meeting. “I call that margin expansion.” In Kalanick’s estimation, payments to drivers were contra-revenue—a deduction from the top line. The inevitable future of robot cars was going to be awfully good for his business, he surmised.

Uber and Google work together on robot cars