Google-backed Waymo recalled 3,871 robotaxis in the United States after a software glitch sent vehicles into closed freeway construction zones, the second recall in weeks for Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit. That is the figure rattling around the news cycle, and the one a retirement-minded shareholder of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) is supposed to look at and wonder whether the self-driving dream is finally cracking. Set it next to a different Waymo figure CEO Sundar Pichai shared on the April 29, 2026 earnings call, when he said he was pleased to see Waymo “surpass 500,000 fully autonomous rides a week”, and the recall starts to look like a speed bump. What it means operationally Waymo lives inside Alphabet’s Other Bets segment, which posted $411 million in Q1 2026 revenue against an operating loss profile that widened to $3.6 billion in the prior quarter. So this is the part of Alphabet that bleeds cash to fund the long game. The recall, in that context, is a software patch for fewer than four thousand cars inside a fleet already running half a million paid rides a week. It is a quality-control event, the kind autonomous vehicle developers have been signaling for years would be part of the road to scale. The capital backing the project keeps growing. Alphabet led a $16 billion Waymo investment round in February 2026, and the parent company is plowing $35.67 billion into capex in a single quarter. This is more than double the year-ago figure, with full-year 2026 guidance of $175-$185 billion. A company spending that aggressively on AI and infrastructure can absorb a software recall. Market reaction Shares of GOOGL is now below $350. Over one week the stock is down nearly 6%. Year to date it is up 10%, and over the past twelve