Larry Page—a transportation obsessive—had invested more than a billion dollars and tens of thousands of employee hours into the problem by the time he and Sergey felt comfortable enough to show their egg-shaped car to the world. No one was more determined to bring robot cars to life than Larry Page. No one except, perhaps, for Anthony Levandowski. The lanky, cantankerous engineer was still working on “Project Chauffeur,” the company’s pet name for autonomous vehicle research. But his position was growing tenuous. For one, Levandowski was a poor leader. He would get in constant fights with
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