“I had wondered recently why google got behind on self-driving cars suddenly when they were actually ahead for so long.”

Google was never “behind” on self-driving cars. Rather, Uber conducted a high-profile PR stunt to convince both the public and their investors that they were well on their way to perfecting an autonomous ride-hail vehicle, done in significant part to obfuscate how far behind Google/Waymo they are, given their seven-year head start. Of course, now we know how Uber brought its test cars into the real-world-road testing phase so rapidly