• The deal calls for the companies to work together to bring autonomous vehicle technology into the mainstream through pilot projects and product development efforts.
• The partnership highlights the fluid nature of relationships in the self-driving-car sector. From technology companies to automakers to firms that manufacture components, dozens of players are angling for a slice of an autonomous vehicle market that many believe will ultimately be a multibillion-dollar industry.
• The partnership indicates that Waymo believes its self-driving-car technology has moved past the research stage and is ready to be applied commercially.

Ben Thompson puts the acquisition of Mobileye by Intel into the Smiling Curve Theory of industries by Stan Shih of Acer. But before that, he also dives into how Smiling Curve Theory applies to PCs, Phones and Servers which is interesting in itself.

In very short, Ben argues that Intel already has expertise in server chips, but can make up for its lack of self-driving car hardware expertise with this acquisition by bringing in Mobileye's cameras, maps and chips. Also, Intel doesn't want to lose on the SDC front the way it lost to Nvidia on the GPU chip front (related: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel)

Alphabet's X spun off the self driving car project as an independent company Waymo under Alphabet, along with a release of a drive taken with no backup drivers and a legally blind passenger last year. That level of confidence is what Google/Alphabet has been aiming for years, and it seems like it's getting there. What are your thoughts around this?