Google is one of those proper names, like TiVo and Xerox, that has morphed – to the chagrin of corporate lawyers and grammarists – into a verb for the act of using the company’s core product.

For now, “to Google” means to plug a word or phrase into an internet search engine. There may come a time, however, when “Googling” means something quite different.

In May, the Silicon Valley giant revealed a prototype for its Google Self-Driving Car, and promptly announced plans to put a fleet of 100 of the little bubbles on the road. The two-seat electric runabouts, which will negotiate urban traffic, traverse complex interchanges and brave mall parking lots with no human intervention, stand to change the definition of getting around for a generation of motorists. “I’m Googling to the grocery store,” they will say, or, “Can you give me a Google to work?”

A brief ride in one of the autonomous pods at London’s Heathrow Airport demonstrated – to someone who loves driving enough to make a career of it – just how pleasant it can be to sit back, gaze at the scenery and leave the motoring to the car. But while the Heathrow pods operate along a closed loop between Terminal 5 and the business car park, the Google car is intended for the real world: stopping at red lights, yielding to pedestrians, swinging through the Starbucks drive-through, all of it.

Atop the roof is a spinning array comprised of 64 lasers, which maps the world as the car moves, recording more than a million data points each second. This spatial information, and position data from GPS mapping software, allow the car to navigate public roads – and share them with human-driven cars. And Google’s greatest vote of confidence in its car’s autonomous gifts? The car lacks any sort of manual override controls. There is no steering wheel, no brake or throttle pedals, no shifter.

It is a product-planning decision that only highly driven individuals would make.

Bron: 10 December 2014 - Matthew Phenix - BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/2014...elf-driving-car

Mening: Google droomt te ver als je het mij vraagt. Ik geloof niet dat zo'n auto in gevaarlijke situaties in het verkeer altijd juist zal reageren, het kan ten slotte niet op alles voorbereid zijn en zeker niet als het samen op de weg moet met auto's die wel bestuurt worden. Ook zijn op bepaalde plaatsen het verkeersreglement een ramp, dit zal de auto denk ik ook niet altijd goed zien wat er nu moet gebeuren. Ik wil er wel in geloven dat het de basis kan en in testritten er goed uitkomt maar in speciale situaties denk ik dat een mens beter reageert, ik zou me niet veilig voelen op de weg als ik zo'n auto zie rijden. Ik geloof wel in voertuigen die men niet hoeft te besturen buiten een bestemming in te vullen maar dan wel op rails.