Google is Uber's new competitor in the Bay area

Google wants to cut out a pie for itself from the already crowded car-pooling business with its own ride-sharing service, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, the report said that after running a pilot program with a ‘select group of employers’ in Bay Area in May, the tech giant is finally ready to connect more commuters with its Waze ride-sharing app and plans to open the program to all San Francisco-area Waze users this fall.

Waze was acquired by Google in 2013 and offers real-time driving directions based on information from other drivers. Though the plan brings Google in direct competition with the likes of Uber and Lyft, unlike them, Waze won’t be a usual cab aggregator but will help connect riders with drivers who are already headed in the same direction.

Google says that it wants to lower fares to the extent that it will discourage drivers from operating as taxi drivers. Anyone with the Waze app can sign up to be a driver in the San Francisco area. The current expanded program charges riders at most 54 cents a mile — which is considerably less than most Uber and Lyft rides and the company doesn’t take a cut or fee of the ride at the moment.

According to Wall Street Journal, “The company says it doesn’t believe Waze drivers’ income is taxable because it considers payments through its service effectively as money for gas.”

Google believes that Waze is a part of their larger ambition to define the future of transportation. This also gives the Mountain View-based tech giant a means to start testing its autonomous driver-less vehicles using the ride-sharing model.