Yes, Google can copy Uber, but can they make it successful?
Uber has a lot of users and drivers, and Google has to convince them to use their app instead of Uber or one of the other existing apps in this space.
Getting into a new market didn’t work for videos so they bought YouTube, it didn’t work for their social network, and it didn’t work for a ton of other cancelled projects.
Replicating Uber is hard because it's a 2 sided market - you need to convince both users and drivers to sign up and neither will if the other isn't there already. But that's not a problem for Waymo because they control the driving side. They simply need to get users to sign up.
When you have something unique and useful, people will sign up.
Getting into a new market didn’t work for videos so they bought YouTube, it didn’t work for their social network, and it didn’t work for a ton of other cancelled projects.