Google’s self-driving car project first came to Austin, Texas in July of last year, marking its first expansion outside of Google’s hometown of Mountain View, California. It was a logical next step, considering Austin’s forward-thinking political culture and unique environmental challenges (“pedicabs, pickup trucks, and everything in between,” Google said). Now, it appears—thanks to some recently-published FCC documents (via Mark Harris)—that Google has plans to bring the self-driving car program to four more mysterious cities…

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Up to June of this year, Google’s self-driving cars had yet to be at fault in any accidents, and it seems that record has held true over the last few months. Of the dozen or so accidents up to that point, the majority had happened when the self-driving car wasn’t even moving, and the rest occurred when Google’s safety drivers were in control of the vehicles.

Unfortunately, in the months after Google released the first report, Google’s cars continued to see a couple of accidents per month. But that trend has come to an interesting halt recently. As we’ve learned thanks to Google’s recently-published October report, the self-driving cars have now gone more than two months without a single accident… expand full story

Googlers use their 20% in many different ways, and usually that means building a product or service they hope will someday see some amount of wider adoption. Gmail and AdSense were both built in 20% time, and now they’re two of Google’s biggest services.

Nat & Lo are going to do something a bit different. Since most people don’t ever get a chance to really see how Google ticks behind the scenes, Nat & Lo thought they would use their 20% time to show us — and they’re doing so via a newly-launched YouTube channel. expand full story

Google’s self-driving car initiative could hit the market as early as 2020, but until then Google is continuing to test its cars around Mountain View. Today, Google announced a new program that will see its self-driving cars become a little more interesting to look at. The new program, called Paint the Town, is touted by Google as being a “moving art experiment” and transforms the company’s self-driving cars into moving pieces of public art.

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Google has launched a new website that will offer monthly updates on its driverless car project including reporting accidents the vehicles have been involved in. expand full story

Virginia has okayed more than 70 miles of road space in the northern part of the state for testing self-driving cars, local media reports. This makes Virginia only one of a few states that allow autonomous automobile testing on public roads — California and Florida being the largest — giving Google and automakers more terrain to test their self-driving cars. expand full story