Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline—Until Now

Earlier this year, Astro Teller, a ponytailed scientist and science fiction writer, gave a TED Talk.

It was a first for Teller, but not for X, or Google X, as the research lab he runs used to be known. The lab has been a fixture on the conference circuit for years. In 2011, Sebastian Thrun, X’s founder, took the TED stage and predicted that driverless cars would put an end to traffic fatalities. In 2013, Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, showed up wearing X’s wearable computer, Google Glass, and argued that face-mounted devices were a natural successor to the smartphone. In 2015, Chris Urmson, the technical lead of X’s autonomous vehicle program, argued that driverless cars should operate with no human oversight at all. By February 2016 it was Teller’s turn.