Geely Holding, the mothership of Geely Motors, has signed an agreement to build a Google Taxi service. More to the point, to build a fleet of electric vehicles. However, both companies will use their respective sub-brands as a form of guerrilla marketing to sell the idea to the general public. Google is a sub-brand of Alphabet inc. Alpabet Inc is a holding company or a conglomerate. In reality, it is a supercharged version of Google to ensure the competition’s commission does not come knocking on the board room door. Geely Holding will use its Zeekr electric brand to make cars for Alphabet Inc’s Waymo ride-hailing service.

Zeekr will make the electric vehicles and Waymo, through its Alphabet entity, will supply the autonomous technology. Waymo’s ambition is to eventually launch a fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the United States of America.

Zeekr will design and build the electric vehicles at its production facility in Sweden. In other words, Volvo will oversee the design and production.

Waymo has not yet provided a specific start date for their partnership with Zeekr, other than stating it would introduce the service in “years to come”. Waymo already operates a fully autonomous Google taxi service, but it is limited to Phoenix Arizona.

The value for Google is not necessarily the actual revenue generated by their Waymo ride-hailing service. The residual income generated by tracking user data is where the real money is made. For example Waymo ergo Google ergo Alphabet Inc will have access to user data which is then re-sold and re-packaged in the form of targeted ads.

The targeted ads are where Google ergo Waymo ergo Alphabet Inc can generate vast sums of advertising revenue. The ride-hailing service, Waymo, is essentially what is known in the tech world as a dumb terminal.