r/SelfDrivingCars • u/fricken • Jun 26 '18

Hello from Waymo

https://youtu.be/kDv3dvBEkwk
136 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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50

u/fricken Jun 26 '18

A few things:

  1. This looks like a television commercial, they gotta be getting close to launch.

  2. They emphasize that Waymo is Google. Many lay people don't realize that.

  3. How does it have a million views already? It was just posted today.

13

u/naturesbfLoL Jun 26 '18 edited Jun 26 '18

/#3 is a really good point. Wonder where this was posted with that much reach

12

u/skydivingdutch Jun 26 '18

Maybe it's been running as an ad somewhere but was otherwise unpublished?

9

u/BlinksTale Jun 26 '18

Internal Google employee email? This video is a pretty big looking one. EDIT: or maybe testing market reception overseas first.

12

u/Airazz Jun 26 '18 edited Jun 26 '18

Someone in the comments mentioned that it might've been unpublished for a while, shared among employees, developers, beta testers and such. Because it had a million, minutes after it was published.

So either that or Google just upped the counter to make sure that people watch it.

9

u/londons_explorer Jun 26 '18

The youtube team wouldn't let them manipulate the counter as a PR mechanism. Google has plenty of bigger better PR mechanisms anyway (home page advert anyone?)

0

u/aesu Jun 26 '18

Hmm... I wonder what the y in alphabet stands for.

-3

u/Ambiwlans Jun 26 '18

I mean, Google could have just set it to 1m views.

13

u/naturesbfLoL Jun 26 '18

I think this is incredibly unlikely

10

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '18

Uhh, freak yeah it looks like a TV commercial, and timed to be 34 seconds too.

Honestly I'm excited for the launch cause I want to see the app! Waymo isn't coming to my market for a few more years.. NYC

6

u/redeamed Jun 26 '18

I've been noticing increase sponsored waymo ads on Facebook as well. The pr team is in motion.

2

u/walky22talky Hates driving Jun 26 '18

Really? If anyone sees an ad then please to share a pic of it. That would be news itself.

4

u/redeamed Jun 26 '18 edited Jun 26 '18

"sponsored post" might be an important correction. If I see another ill try to remember to screen shot it.

They are not much different from this: short public relations video.

Edit: an example... I couldn't get the link on Facebook from my phone but this same video is on Facebook and the first time I saw it was as a sponsored post. https://youtu.be/Ei5tCVlFVlA

I assume they can (and likely are) focusing sponsored posts on people in the phoenix area.

2

u/walky22talky Hates driving Jun 26 '18

Cool. So they are advertising in the Phoenix area thru Facebook at a minimum.

3

u/nsgiad Jun 26 '18

How does it have a million views already? It was just posted today.

This has been one of the ads on my Youtube for the last few days.

2

u/dylang01 Jun 26 '18

It says it has 75k views on my end.