Why the father of the self-driving car left Google - Therese Poletti, MarketWatch

One might think that Sebastian Thrun, known in Silicon Valley as the father of the self-driving car, would be questioning his move away from the technology as autonomous cars become more than a pie-in-the-sky dream. “‘You had the coolest job on the planet, why are you doing this?’” Thrun said he is often asked. Thrun, however, believes he now has a more noble mission: Making education democratic and available to all on the internet. The Silicon Valley legend is president and cofounder of Udacity Inc., based a few miles from the GooglePlex, where Thrun started up Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, +0.35% GOOGL, +0.69% celebrated driverless-cars initiative and other “moonshot” projects. Udacity is a startup that takes advantage of its location, connections and expertise to offer free online courses on topics such as web development, programming, Android and iOS development and many other tech topics. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-father-of-the-self-driving-car-left-google-2016-09-02