PJ Vogt

Competition would arrive.

The team itself would begin to schism.

And one member, a person who believed the team was moving too slowly, would actually take matters into his own hands in a particularly extreme way.

After the break, mutiny.

Hey there, Stephen Dubner.

That, again, is PJ Vogt.

And you are listening to an episode of the Search Engine podcast here on Freakonomics Radio.

We will be right back.

Welcome back to the show.

As early as 2010, Google's driverless car project had developed some very impressive self-driving technology.

But what they were struggling to decide was this.

What was the actual product they were developing here?

Here's Sebastian Thrunn.

We had a lot of debates inside Google what the right business model was.

At some point, we actually had a big debate.

We should just buy Tesla.

And Tesla was worth $2 billion at the time.

I remember this.

Maybe we should have in hindsight.

But joking aside here, there was a debate whether this is more of an assistive technology or a disruptive replacement technology.