Larry Page in an interview for Fortune about self-driving cars:

If we have automated cars, or even if we have some fraction of automated cars, we'll save hundreds of millions of dollars on parking, just at Google. When you think about your experience, the car can drop you at the front door to the building you work at and then it goes and parks itself. Whenever you need it, your phone notices that you're walking out of the building, and your car's there immediately by the time you get downstairs.

That’s a fantastic vision for the future. I wonder though if Google will succeed in licensing its technology, if ever self-driving cars become widespread, or if other organisations will develop their own competing technologies. Is Audi going to create self-driving A6s itself or license the technology from Google ? If it’s the latter, imagine how prominent Google will become if they get licensing fees on each car manufactured.

Will we see self-driving public buses? Will truck drivers be replaced by self-driving trucks?

Or even cabs? Just imagine streets filled with yellow self-driving cabs, just take your smartphone out, hail one with an app. The closest free one stops near you, hop in, enter your address or even say it out loud. Sit back, you’re going home.