Emails show Google feared losing driver's seat in autonomous cars to Uber

Google kicked off the modern driverless car age when it started its Chauffeur driverless car project in 2009, years before other companies

Three years ago, the head of Google’s self-driving car project emailed co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to sound an alarm. 

"Over the last six months we have stopped playing to win and instead are now playing to minimise downside," Chris Urmson wrote. The source of his worry: Uber.

That missive from Urmson, who left Google in 2016, was made public on Monday at the start of a dramatic trade secret theft trial between Uber Technologies Inc. and Google’s car unit, now a part of Alphabet Inc. called Waymo. That email and other internal correspondence from 2015 and 2016 reveal deep concern