Google's rivals in self-driving cars may force it into hard choice

The San Jose Mercury reports:

The sudden acceleration in deployment of self-driving technology could confront Google with a choice: stick to its fundamental plan to develop fully autonomous vehicles or downshift to join rivals who are poised to put less-advanced semi-autonomous cars on the road first.

Amid a blitz of progress announcements this month from robot-car firms that could beat Google to commercial success, the Mountain View tech titan on Friday confirmed it has hired a new head of its self-driving program who is known for steering the successful expansion of Airbnb into a new market.

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