In early 2009, the Google Self-Driving Car Project was born, evolving over the years into what we now know as Waymo.

Not long after the project started, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page challenged engineers to drive autonomously without human intervention or disengagements along ten challenging 100-mile routes in Google’s home state of California.

Yes, that was long before state governments started granting licenses for driverless car testing on public roads. The first state to issue such a license was Nevada in May 2012, with California doing the same only in September 2014.

See Also: Waymo Given The Go-Ahead To Pick Up Passengers With Autonomous Vehicles In California

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in an autonomous Toyota Prius prototype

So how did Google get away with testing fully-autonomous cars on public roads in California in 2009? Well, it helped that its Google Self-Driving Car Project was kept private as part of the company’s secretive X lab. The company avoided public announcement of the program for more than a year, making the first announcement in October 2010. The fact that it now openly admits to having tested autonomous vehicles on public roads as early as 2009 probably has something to do with California’s statute of limitations which range from one to ten years.

“By December 2009, the team had completed their first route, and nine months later in mid 2010, we had wrapped up the last,” Waymo writes in a blog post. Now, more than ten years and billions of real-world and simulation miles later, Google is releasing footage from its archive “to share the remarkable progress made by the first generation Waymo Driver.”

The following demonstration videos are taken from self-driving Toyota Prius prototypes Google used at the time. They are definitely fun to watch, for various reasons. One would be to see how cautious Google’s early self-driving tech was – just check out how far away from the car in front the autonomous Prius stops in congested traffic. You can also watch them to admire the scenery or see how different California’s vehicle fleet was back in 2009. Either way, make sure you use the ‘Next’ button as there are twelve videos in total. Enjoy!