Hacker News Reader

The self-driving car project that came from Google X sparked the huge investment in autonomous vehicles, and gave Google a huge head start. In addition, they positioned themselves well with a large investment in Uber. The moonshot has succeeded/will succeed from a technological sense. Now they just need the right go-to-market approach.

View on HN

While I don't disagree with you, I think the real credit goes to Dr. Tony Tether who was the director of DARPA for the duration of the self-driving car competitions. He set aside money for the races and helped design them. After the last race in 2007 Google acquired most of their talent from various teams.

Definitely, but to me it seems like Google was responsible for jumping on it and taking it from university research projects to a viable "moonshot." So it's much less waiting for a moonshot - they already have it - more just waiting for the launch

Reply on news.ycombinator.com