Uber Technologies Inc and Google Inc have long been bitter rivals in the race to build the autonomous vehicles that appear integral to the future of transportation. Soon, Uber will have a bit of help in that effort from a man who played a key role at Google.
Amit Singhal, a 15-year Google veteran and a former senior vice president for search at the company, on Friday said that he planned to join Uber as senior vice president for engineering. At Uber, he will work to build out the software and infrastructure that are the foundation of the company’s ride-hailing services.
Singhal will report to Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick and lead the company’s mapping division and a unit that runs the dispatching, marketing and pricing of Uber cars. He will also advise Anthony Levandowski, who runs the company’s self-driving automobile efforts.
“It’s hard enough to connect millions of drivers to millions of riders in real time while creating optimal routes for drivers,” Singhal wrote in a post on his personal blog on Friday. “Add to that the twist of predicting real-time traffic, pooling multiple riders and making the system economically attractive for everyone — and now you have one of the most challenging computer science problems I’ve encountered in my 30-year career.”
The hiring of Singhal, who left Google last year, is a coup for Uber, which has stated its intention to fight Google’s substantial head start in autonomous-vehicle research. Uber has poached multiple high-level employees from Google over the past seven years, including Levandowski.
Early in Uber’s history, it and Google were more allies than enemies. Google highlighted the Uber app in its maps application as a mode of transportation, and GV, the venture capital arm of Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc, has invested hundreds of millions of US dollars in Uber.
However, since it became clearer that Uber and Google would compete in the development of self-driving vehicles and in other areas, the companies have grown apart. Google offers a type of carpooling service in the San Francisco area through Waze, a mapping app it owns. And David Drummond, a top Google executive, left his position on the Uber board of directors last year.
Singhal’s move to Uber ratchets up the rivalry. Hired by Google in 2000, he was the company’s 176th employee and he rewrote many of the original search algorithms created by the company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Singhal is credited as one of the engineers who built the smarter and faster search engine that gave Google what proved to be an insurmountable advantage in Web search. When Singhal left his position as Google’s head of search in February last year, he said he planned to focus on philanthropy.
“I love Amit’s excitement for solving complex computer science problems and his passion for helping improve people’s lives through technology,” Kalanick said in a statement. “The team at Uber, myself included, will learn a lot from him.”
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
RSS