Spawned from a necessity to search out dependable transportation round its hometown, Mountain View, Calif., Google began its personal ride-hailing community on a small scale, Levandowski says. It was known as Freebird, and it resembled in spirit a San Francisco startup simply starting to upend transportation.

A brand new path ahead

Had the mission been allowed to flourish, Levandowski laments, maybe Freebird would as we speak be as ubiquitous as Uber. As a substitute, he says, Google leaders seen the community as a distraction and shelved the mission.

For the primary time, Levandowski had doubts about his future on the firm. He had disagreed with the self-driving-or-bust pivot, been handed over in favor of Urmson when Thrun departed and now seethed as a novel mission was shuttered. Frustrations boiled. The sentiments had been mutual.

“Along with his manipulations and lack of enthusiasm and dedication to the [self-driving] mission, it grew to become clearer and clearer that this was a misplaced trigger,” Urmson instructed attorneys throughout an...