In December 2018, Waymo launched its self-driving car service, Waymo One, in metro Phoenix. Might this have been the word’s first autonomous ride-hailing business? Possibly. According to Larry Burns, author of Autonomy, the genesis of Waymo One goes back many years when Google co-founder, Larry Page was a student at the University of Michigan between 1991 and 1995. As Burns describes the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, “it can be a pleasant place in the spring, summer and fall…but in winter, the campus turns into a difficult place to be outside.” When Page would leave one of his engineering classes and head to the bus stop, he seemed to always have to wait on a bus that never seemed to come. He would think about how poor the transportation system had become, and he became interested in alternative solutions. In 2009, Google began secretly developing self-driving technology which led to the first fully driverless ride on public roads in 2015 given to a legally blind person.
The World’s First Autonomous Taxi Service
