"More glaringly, the cars will have a human behind the wheel, there to take control in case the car does something it shouldn’t.

So no, this is not the anyone-can-ride, let-the-robot-drive experience Waymo and its competitors have been promising for years. Building a reliably safe system has proven far harder than just about everyone anticipated and its cars aren’t ready to drive without human oversight. But Waymo promised to launch a commercial service sometime in 2018, it didn’t want to miss its deadline and risk its reputation as the leader of the industry it essentially created, and not even the might of Waymo parent company Alphabet can delay the end of the calendar year.

So Waymo is pushing out a software update, tweaking its branding, and calling it a launch."