31 ms·

The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

• beering 10y ago
  TL;DR: The "Bombshell" is Alphabet/Waymo's lawsuit against Lewandowski and Uber for stealing trade secrets, and an interpretation that Lewandowski formed Otto basically as a cover to get a big payday from Uber in exchange for the secrets.
  • dantiberian 10y ago
    The bombshell part specifically would be Levandowski arranging with Uber to steal Waymo tech, form Otto, and Uber would acquire Otto. In all of the reporting I read about this after the first filing, this was missed.
    • kinghajj 10y ago
      If true, would that open Uber to lawsuits from their investors for misuse of funds?
      • dantiberian 10y ago
        The SEC opened an investigation into Theranos, so possibly? The issue with Theranos was more around their representations to investors though. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/17/the-sec-gets-the-case-its-been-waiting-for-in-silicon-valley/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/17/the-sec-gets-the-case-its-...
    • hammock 10y ago
      I am reminded of an HN comment from 206 days ago that seemed prescient, even then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315888 This is from the big Bloomberg article/interview that came out today: 'Kalanick began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or competitors. They’d grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city’s Ferry Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company’s trucks to market faster.' Which implies to me that the plan was for Uber to acquire Otto all along.
      • Judgmentality 10y ago
        Here's another comment from an HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558078 "Otto was designed to be sold to Uber before it was created, there's a reason it was self-funded despite having nearly 100 employees by the time it was acquired. Anthony Levandowski met Travis Kalanick years ago and had been planning something like this for a while. It's basically an open secret."
        • transfire 10y ago
          But how do we know Google wasn't the one making that plan? I find it strange that Google paid Levandowski millions in bonuses after he quit abruptly and after they already knew he was starting a company with their IP.
          • mattmanser 10y ago
            The bonuses could have been historically earned?
            • cvoss 10y ago
              Via a recent Bloomberg article [0], the (pre-Waymo) car project had an "unorthodox compensation system" resulting in "multi-million dollar payouts" that were somehow tied to the success/value of the project. A fascinating and weird way to incentivize hard work. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reason-staffers-quit-google-s-car-project-the-company-paid-them-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...
          • the_duke 10y ago
            So Google paid Lewandowski a bonus to steal their own IP, launch a company and sell it for a large amount to Uber so they could destroy Uber with a huge lawsuit? Makes sense! (cough)
        • beamatronic 10y ago
          What is the illegal part of this? This happens all the time in the Valley. Did they actually steal source code?
    • thrill 10y ago
      Yes, I think this could be a very big deal. As someone who several years ago "managed" to take over a publicly traded company (via a federal judge's order once certain evidence was presented) and gather and present evidence of massive fraud, etc., and working entirely as an amateur in this effort, managed to aid in recovering assets and capturing the former CEO and sending him to prison for several years, I find stories of (allegedly) fraudulent action (and solid response) like this heartwarming. If Uber had no self-driving car program to speak of before talking with Levandowski, and discovery shows they basically started from that conversation, then that would seem to open up all of Uber to any discovery process - they can't justifiably claim "it's the self driving car division that did all this". This seems much more than a civil process from my reading of it. It could be great theater. If I was on Uber's BOD, I'd immediately relieve the CEO simply based on the allegations here, and if I didn't have the votes to do that, I'd immediately resign my seat.
      • ontoillogical 10y ago
        >As someone who several years ago "managed" to take over a publicly traded company ... That sounds like an interesting story! Have you told it elsewhere?
        • thrill 10y ago
          Heh - usually after a few beers, and it gets even better. The first SEC attorney involved was a real stickler, but up for retirement in the middle of the process. His replacement was a real hard charger, and worked with me to get the former CEO incarcerated ... and he then went into private practice ... and a few years later got indicted for pulling the same scheme himself working with another small cap company as their adviser.
          • pthreads 10y ago
            I want to know the whole story so bad. You should write a book. :-)
            • 10y ago
    • jwr 10y ago
      When I skimmed the original articles, that is exactly what I guessed — e.g. no way this was a coincidence.
    • sschueller 10y ago
      With everything that has gone on at Uber including a former friend of Travis' accusing him of stealing the company concept itself, something like this wouldn't be a Surprise.
      • gumby 10y ago
        Although I am ready to believe almost anything derogatory about Kalanick up to and including eating bbq'd babies with mayonnaise (yuck), the idea of "stealing a company concept" is pretty lame. Lyft started with a different business snd pivoted to Uber's (itself all a pivot?). Did Lyft "steal the concept?"
        • dnautics 10y ago
          Not quite. Uber started as a hailing black car effort, then Lyft pivoted from ridesharing to hailing 'common cars' over a Hackathon iirc, and then Uber pivoted to uberX. History aside, this 'copying of ideas' is distinct since someone independent is reimplementing a general concept (which is not really protectable). You would be hard pressed to argue that burger king stole McDonald's idea of selling hamburgers, for example. I think in the Uber/Otto case the theft is pretty specific. The laws outline what it means to steal corporate secrets. (This is distinct from violating IP or copying an idea). Usually this sort of theft involves being privy to corporate secrets and breaking contractual agreements to not take certain information with you.
          • gumby 10y ago
            > I think in the Uber/Otto case the theft is pretty specific. I agree 100%. When you wrote "stole the concept" I thought you meant Uber's original business approaches.
            • deleted 10y ago
              [deleted]
      • Applejinx 10y ago
        It must be very confusing and frustrating for the guy. It's just like Enron: all that behavior is super wonderful and exciting and disruptive and rewarding, until suddenly it's not. The kind of person who does this stuff, really doesn't understand even the concept of 'crossing a line', or indeed legality. Hence, it seems to them really offensive that anyone should get in their way, and up TO that point their self-confidence carries them and helps persuade others that they're the golden boy. The real lesson is 'how did we get here in the first place'. It's easy to bust the biggest megastar and make a story of hubris and disastrous, Icarus-like fall, but isn't it the very same system that put them there at that valuation? The rule seems to be 'Seem like the biggest monster around, but if we catch you actually BEING it, you're busted'.
  • pfarnsworth 10y ago
    Bloggism at its worst. A blog post with an agenda making huge leaps of faith without bothering to keep a semblance of impartiality to try to show that Uber somehow conspired to steal technology. Without bothering to hear the other side. "From Waymo’s filings, it seems that they have Levandowski dead to rights on stealing their LiDAR designs." This is one of the dumbest quotes in the post. Of course the lawyer's job is to write up their side of the story. He hasn't even heard the other side of the story and he's already coming up with conclusions. That's pretty terrible.
    • angersock 10y ago
      So, do you work for Uber full-time, or are you just shilling as a contract gig?
      • 55555 10y ago
        All uber shills are independent contractors. Disclosure: I used to shill for Uber but when I factored in wear on my laptop/keyboard (you have to bring your own equipment) I realized I was actually working for below minimum wage.
        • angersock 10y ago
          Bravo! ;)
    • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      Reading the deposition, under oath, of the forensics engineer who investigated the situation basically made me agree with the blog post and even that quote in particular. I think they have him dead to rights, here, barring a miracle of explaining away very, very suspicious behavior and a mountain of circumstantial evidence. I would hope if I asked any of my source control clients to dump a bunch of stuff and then walked to another employer who oh by the way is doing something very similar, I'd be investigated as rigorously. I hear what you're saying, but I think you're being unfair. This isn't bloggism; I think it's a pretty solid analysis from a lot of available information. There is definitely another side, and it's definitely making an appearance in this thread, but I don't think it's unfair to say "yep, that looks like a hole in one." Certainly smells like one, and it's not partisan or agenda-based to say that. Could you elaborate on what you feel the agenda is here?
• Analemma_ 10y ago
  Yeah, this is a big deal. Uber has gambled everything on self-driving cars, what with their absurd burn rate and all. If that gets shut down because of trade secret injunctions, I don't think they have time to pivot to another strategy, especially after their reputation has nosedived.
  • empath75 10y ago
    It was a stupid moonshot play. They should have just focused on being a really good taxi company.
    • tekklloneer 10y ago
      I disagree. They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. Instead, hyper aggressive business tactics (which were largely unwarranted) has backfired.
      • untog 10y ago
        > They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. I disagree: they don't make cars. That's a huge impediment. The prime position company is surely Tesla. Or, really, any car manufacturer.
        • shrewduser 10y ago
          i disagree again, making cars isn't the competitive advantage it's being able to run and service large fleets of cars, taxi / bus companies with all the physical plants would have the competitive advantage out of the gate.
          • jaimex2 10y ago
            I disagree, if you make the cars you can create them from the ground up to be self driving taxis. Think of all the improvements you could make to make better use of the cabin. If you are retrofitting existing cars you are wasting a ton of money and getting a half baked solution to a dedicated provider.
• booleanbetrayal 10y ago
  I can't imagine what Lewandowski and Uber were thinking here. The timeline is just too constrained to even be taken seriously.
  • themgt 10y ago
    Even at the time, knowing none of the characters or background I found Otto a very odd startup, one I almost didn't believe looked legit, and their rapid acquisition by Uber was one more "huh, strange" moment - how could they have bootstrapped out of nowhere and had tech worth that kind of money so fast? It's almost hard to believe Uber would be so brazen as to put something like this together, except that breaking the law has been Uber's business model since day 1.
    • Mango_Diesel 10y ago
      To me it seems like the Uber executives know the music has stopped playing, and are now trying to do anything possible to save the company.
    • Eridrus 10y ago
      It doesn't seem that much stranger than the Cruise or Argo; people with real experience are getting snapped up like crazy without a product.
      • alpha_squared 10y ago
        Can't find info on Argo (not looking properly, most likely), but Cruise raised over $18m before being bought (for ???). It looks like a solid effort to launch a product/startup that was snatched up. Otto was ~6 months and bought for $680m. I think there's a pretty large delta of strangeness there.
        • Eridrus 10y ago
          https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/argo-ai#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/argo-ai#/entity
• nvr219 10y ago
  Does this have the potential to kill Uber?
  • nilved 10y ago
    Uber is too big to fail really
    • acchow 10y ago
      This usually means the government will bail you out if you do fail... Can you define your usage here?
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • ohstopitu 10y ago
        I could be wrong but what I think he/she meant was the fact that Uber has so many investors in it's pie that a loss like Uber would be monumental (considering the profits they'd get if it succeeded). So it's investors would probably bail it out (and try their best to make sure it's a bit more restrained).
      • psbp 10y ago
        They probably mean network effects. Facebook is the prime example. For Uber, a critical mass in users and drivers makes it hard to unseat.
        • hangonhn 10y ago
          There is no network effect here. Each additional driver does not increase the value of the network to the other drivers and similarly for passengers. Uber and Lyft are old-fashioned market makers. They increased the pool of suppliers and consumers and connected the groups. In cities where both Uber and Lyft exist, substituting Uber for Lyft and vice versa does not change the value the driver or passenger derives from either service.
• acchow 10y ago
  > "Uber gets dealt an injunction on their self-driving car project. They have to start again, a long way behind other companies." How is this actually implemented? How do you prevent a new project starting from scratch with the same employees from ending up with the exact same tech as before?
  • jimmywanger 10y ago
    Pretty much the same way you could do it with any other manufacturing/industrial process. Imagine re-creating a fairly large complex project without access to any source control, build systems, or bug reports. It'd be easier than starting from scratch, but not much - especially for hardware, all the tradeoffs and manufacturing tricks you had to investigate and implement your devices would have to be recreated. Your end result would probably look similar, but the way you get there would be different. Just like the wings on an insect are different from the wings of a bird.
  • MikeTheGreat 10y ago
    I'm neither a lawyer nor experienced in this sort of thing (thankfully! :) ), but I would imagine that Uber would have to throw out everything they've got now, fire all the employees that are currently working on the project, and then restart something from scratch. Sometimes, if a company want to clone a competitor's product they'll use a 'clean room protocol' - I imagine that Uber could do something similar here.
  • valarauca1 10y ago
    How do you prevent a new project starting from scratch with the same employees from ending up with the exact same tech as before? You can't. I mean legally you can. But the court case to fully flesh this out are impossibly long. So safe to just not. The _former employee_ part is so damning that is just doesn't work. If you have separate employees you _can_, if you avoid patents. Look up clean room implementation.
• temp246810 10y ago
  Not related - but I do find it ironic that google is up in arms about stolen tech given Steve Jobs' vendetta against google over stolen smart phone ideas. And yes I realize that the gravity of the situation here is different but it's still an amusing thought - not sure why everyone is so offended by this comment. Regarding the lawsuit - I've learned that we have no clue what is going on behind the scenes, so why stress over it. For all I know this is a power play by google or some evil scheme by Uber. Let's just wait and see how it plays out.
  • sfeng 10y ago
    Given the context provided in this post, it seems pretty blatant and obvious. Stealing a design is one thing, stealing the circuit board design from an unreleased product is espionage.
    • erikpukinskis 10y ago
      Out of curiosity, what is it about a user interface and a circuit board that makes you consider the design of one to be protected but not the other?
      • emanuelsaringan 10y ago
        One is already on the face (literally) of 4 billion people while the other one is confidential.
  • civilian 10y ago
    I'd like to clarify the use of the word "Stealing". It appears that Lewandowski _stole_ technical documentation and engineering work done around LiDAR. Google did not steal code, technical docs, or any engineering material. They recognized good usability concepts being used by Apple, and adapted them. They were matching the market leader's feature set. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/10/25/yes-google-stole-from-apple-and-thats-a-good-thing/#3f4154d94e36 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/10/25/yes-googl... It's a little different.
  • 10y ago
• harryh 10y ago
  Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference FWIW this assertion (which isn't really core to the central thesis of the post, but still) is wrong. That number comes from https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unic... but the author of that story misread the data. Uber only counts their cut as revenue not the full cost of the ride. Despite this repetition (now corrected, thx!) of this incorrect data I find the overall thesis of the post compelling! As a disinterested bystander, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. EDIT: It turns out the original 41% statement comes from http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver... not from the Financial Times. It can be hard to trace these things back sometimes.
  • viggity 10y ago
    I know companies subsidize product costs to get larger market share, but subsidizing 59% seems a bit crazy.
    • harryh 10y ago
      As I said, they aren't doing that.
      • tantalor 10y ago
        So what's the real number?
        • harryh 10y ago
          AFAIK there is not enough publicly available data to answer this question.
          • thinkmilitant 10y ago
            Oh no! It's probably even worse then! /s
• wyldfire 10y ago
  This part looks to be the most smoking-gun: > December 13, 2016 - A Waymo employee was accidentally copied on an email from one of its LiDAR-component vendors titled OTTO FILES. The email contained a drawing of what appeared to be an Otto circuit board that resembled Waymo’s LiDAR board and shared several unique characteristics with it. (Filing 59)
  • wavefunction 10y ago
    "accidentally copied" Thank god for the honest among us.
    • elwell 10y ago
      Yeah, you have to wonder if the LiDAR employee had realized the similarities and eventually one day just decided to let it leak 'accidentally'.
      • wavefunction 10y ago
        Well, unless they first worked at Otto, then migrated to Waymo... ;)
    • eco 10y ago
      It could have also been a simple mistake. Several Otto employees came from Waymo. Not hard to send email to John Smith <jsmith@google.com> instead of John Smith <jsmith@otto.com> by mistake if you were in regular contact with that person as part of their role at a previous job doing largely the same thing.
      • ghaff 10y ago
        I like autocomplete email addresses but I do worry that the day will come when I send something embarrassing or damaging to the wrong person. I never have afaik although I have sent a couple emails that resulted in a frantic follow up to please don't read the prior message.
• d--b 10y ago
  It's not a bigger bombshell than what was already in the news. We know what stealing means. The guy is an engineer at Waymo and plugs a USB stick in a laptop to download 9GB of code. And he hoped to get away with this? I'm pretty sure everyone at Google knew, they were just waiting to time it right. "Hey, what about now? When Uber is taking fire from all directions?"
  • JamilD 10y ago
    The bigger accusation the article makes is that Levandowski made a deal with Uber to create a startup with Waymo's stolen data, that would later be acquired by Uber. So Otto was essentially just a vessel for that stolen data, created simply to transfer the IP to Uber. If true, that'd be much bigger and much more damaging than just stealing some files.
  • neonnoodle 10y ago
    It's a much bigger deal if it can be proven that Uber essentially conspired with him to steal the IP. If Uber had prior knowledge, that's a very different thing than just some unscrupulous rogue engineer who wants to get rich.
  • oh_sigh 10y ago
    Doubtful they knew. I'd imagine with these kind of forensics, there is such a glut of data that it is really difficult to proactively monitor it. A post-hoc analysis after they found something fishy seems most likely.
  • _audakel 10y ago
    i can't believe someone as smart as he is would just blatantly stick in a usb. With how much money he was going to make he could have researched some more annomous ways to get it. Not the least would be to intercept a team members auth/pw and use that to access the data.
    • alphonsegaston 10y ago
      It fits the pattern of most crimes. A whole lot of money and the chance to get it quick tends to drop most people's IQs down an order of magnitude.
• patmcguire 10y ago
  How credible are all these logs? Email records (came up in Oracle Android case) are one thing, emails are a known thing. But how trustworthy are Google Drive logs, a record that only exists within Google, when what they've recorded helps their case? I'm not casting aspersions, just curious how a new kind of evidence plays out.
  • Xorlev 10y ago
    Let's not pretend that you can't fabricate emails too. I strongly suspect that the existence and timestamps of the Drive logs can be verified at multiple levels and exist in backups made around that time. HTTP logs as well as MTA logs have been provided as evidence before, those too could be fabricated.
    • patmcguire 10y ago
      Yeah, I didn't mean to imply fabrication: just there are going to be hiccups and weird inconsistencies in any data source, and it's not one where the hiccups have been seen before in a legal context. You have multiple levels, some slightly disagree, which is correct? Email you have a bunch of different parties: the sender, the receiver, the servers in the middle, all of which are going to record something, and maybe they differ in weird ways, but if you got it you go it.
  • scarmig 10y ago
    By what process do you think Waymo (or is it Alphabet) would fabricate these logs? Like, who in particular would do it? Would they form a team of a dozen, two dozen people to do all the fabrication across all the systems that would be impacted, without leaving any fingerprints? And of course none of this planning could be done over email or Google docs, so it all has to be coordinated in person with only handwritten notes. And you've got to make sure a co-operative representative from legal is involved, just so the evidence generated in the logs corresponds to the cover story.
    • patmcguire 10y ago
      Yeah, I thought I made it clear I didn't think there would be any fabrication. That's different from it being able to completely rely on something being accurate, I doubt it's recorded with the same care financial data is, for instance.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• Apocryphon 10y ago
  Would an implosion of Uber be the first step of the end of this tech bubble?
  • gtirloni 10y ago
    If there's a bubble, there's no evidence it's being driven by the same bro-culture or IP theft that Uber is being accused of. So I don't think so, something else is needed :)
  • muninn_ 10y ago
    No. It would definitely lead to a torrent of click-bait headlines though. So we have that to look forward to....
• andrewrice 10y ago
  What is the possibility of criminal charges being brought forth if it's determined that Kalanick actively conspired with Lewandowski?
  • gtirloni 10y ago
    Seems likely. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/man-sentenced-for-distributing-avionics-trade-secrets https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/man-sentenced-for-distribut...
  • rajacombinator 10y ago
    Curious about this too. Seems more serious than a "pay a fine and get off" situation, but I don't know anything about the relevant law.
• salimmadjd 10y ago
  I actually think this might be a blessing in disguise for Uber. I always argued self-driving cars would destroy Uber should Apple or Google want to enter this space. Why? Because self-driving cars are basically a fleet service driven by a software. Once you remove the driver (where Uber spent so much acquiring) The only differentiator is the consumer facing experience. Neither Uber or Lyft will have as much power as Apple and Google since they ultimately own the mobile experience. I ultimately envision this business as kind of a Kayak mobile on the phone managed by Siri or Google/Apple maps that will call the nearest taxi or the cheaper rate aggregating from multiple possible vendors. Larger fleets (Uber, Apple, Google) to smaller individually manage fleets. Car companies might decide to also enter that market in collaboration with financial underwriter. So having a network of drivers ultimately gives Uber some leverage and removing them from the equation, I think it'll actually destroy Uber. This is why I think, this could be a blessing in disguise.
  • jacknoble 10y ago
    The drivers are going to be removed from the equation no matter what though.
    • thearn4 10y ago
      I do believe that this is true, but I can't help but also believe that the timelines that the tech community has in mind are absolutely too optimistic. I think like many promising innovations (AI, VR, etc.) it will have periods of rapid innovation followed by contraction and lull, repeated many times until general adoption is realized.
      • jon_richards 10y ago
        You're going to have a few palm pilots before you have an iphone.
    • erikpukinskis 10y ago
      The drivers will get removed from the "bring me from X to Y and leave me alone" equation, but drivers who can do slightly more complex things while driving around (pick up flowers here, then get my son from Judo practice, and practice his French with him in the car) will be a huge market, bigger than the current rideshare market, and a better moneymaker for drivers. Uber just needs to think of themselves as a mobile staffing company and they'll be fine. Unfortunately, staffing is a market where "Move fast and be an asshole" isn't a great philosophy so they'll need a bit of a temperament change to survive.
• Havoc 10y ago
  >Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference. Holy hell. That's not exactly a sound business model.
  • harryh 10y ago
    That 41% assertion is wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861267
  • vkou 10y ago
    It's 41% of the driver's cut of the ride (So closer to 12% of the trip cost).
    • harryh 10y ago
      That is also not correct. Uber's cut of the ride (which is a bit under 20% of the fare) is covering 41% of their total corporate expenses (which are not the costs of delivering rides).
      • vkou 10y ago
        So, they are losing 12%/ride, but some of these costs will scale with the number of rides, and some will not.
        • harryh 10y ago
          That is also not correct. TBH I have no idea where you are even getting that 12% number.
• arzt 10y ago
  If this goes to a jury, could the damages shut uber down?
  • tyingq 10y ago
    Hard to say. If I were Uber, and we seemed likely to lose, I would try to convey the following... The only thing truly gained by stealing Waymos's LiDAR designs was a temporary period of lower cost , but high quality, LiDAR unit. Effectively, a short term discount. You can buy high quality today...It's just expensive. More affordable LiDAR is coming, for everyone, regardless of what Waymo does. They are not the only entity using innovation to drive the cost down. I would try to have the punishment match that gain, versus something more catastrophic. Of course, IANAL, and have been mystified by judgements in the past. Some were immensely lower, some higher than what seemed to make sense. Also, who knows what else was stolen? The LiDAR stuff might just be the one Waymo could most easily demonstrate before filing suit...perhaps there's more.
    • londons_explore 10y ago
      One might imagine them saying: This LIDAR costs $10k. Other LIDAR costs $100k. At the time of this lawsuit, we had 25 test cars on the road. Therefore triple damages are $90k * 25 * 3, so we'll pay you $7 million.
• matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  > December 3, 2015 - Mr Levandowski searched for instructions on how to access Waymo’s design server on his work laptop. Based on Gary Brown’s deposition (a Google forensic security engineer) this was an SVN server. (Brown 15) > December 11, 2015 - Anthony Levandowski installed TortoiseSVN and downloaded 9.7 GB of data from the SVN repository. (Brown 17) > December 14, 2015 - A USB card reader was attached to the laptop for eight hours. Google doesn’t appear to have logged what the laptop did over that time, but the implication is that data was copied from the laptop to a memory card. (Brown 18) If these three things are true, then that looks extremely bad for Otto. I imagine they'll be a lot of questions regarding the purpose of that USB stick.
• GCA10 10y ago
  For all the noise and excitement at the start of these clashes, don't they usually get settled with a licensing agreement that both sides can live with? Sometimes we also see a medium-sized payment (not ruinous) to address the allegedly bad conduct. That usually gets paired with some lawyer-like phrases that amount to a blend of quasi-apology and face-saving evasions. It's still an interesting suit. But after Apple/Samsung, Oracle/SAP and many others, it's hard to expect that the eventual resolution lives up to the pre-trial buildup.
  • matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    I don't imagine there'll be an amicable end to both parties. What the lawsuit is describing is tantamount to blatant theft. This wasn't just reverse engineered. I imagine someone might go to prison if Alphabet wins.
    • GCA10 10y ago
      The Oracle/SAP case covered the exact same territory, with allegations of illegal downloads of proprietary software as part of a theft-like scheme. Details are here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-sap-se-settlement-idUSKCN0IX2RJ20141113 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-sap-se-settlement-i... The civil case was filed in 2007, reached its high-water mark with a jury verdict in 2010 of $1.3 billion in damages, and after a great deal of appeals-court maneuvering, ultimately was settled in 2014 for $356 million in damages. A separate criminal case was settled for $20 million in 2011. If this Huffington Post article has it right, no individuals were charged. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/oracle-sap-settlement_n_959817.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/oracle-sap-settleme...
      • mbesto 10y ago
        The biggest difference here is the hype and attention associated with self-driving cars. TomorrowNow was basically caught stealing Oracle manuals to provide the same service as Oracle but at a lower cost. The person who "wins" the self-driving market on the other hand potentially may be the purveyor of a business and an industry that is set to upend an industry that absolutely dwarfs "Oracle maintenance contracts". Stakes are much higher.
• mmanfrin 10y ago
  Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a memory card was plugged in for 8 hours a year ago? I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    You're talking about a company whose mission is "to organize the world's information". If you're an employee thinking about wrong-doing, you've gotta have that in the back if your mind.
  • cvwright 10y ago
    They have some pretty cool stuff for monitoring their internal systems. For example, this distributed live forensics system: GRR Rapid Response https://github.com/google/grr https://github.com/google/grr http://grr-response.blogspot.com/ http://grr-response.blogspot.com/
    • zeptomu 10y ago
      Funny note: these screenshots show an AWS instance :) https://github.com/google/grr/blob/gh-pages/screenshots/Screenshot%20from%202013-11-18%2018-36-13.png https://github.com/google/grr/blob/gh-pages/screenshots/Scre...
      • navek 10y ago
        maybe simply to keep keep all forensic operations as separated from any google operations as possible?
  • d--b 10y ago
    Mountable device tracking is very common to log. My company started implementing when we went from 20 to 30 employees. When things like this are at stakes, it's a small price to pay. In fact, it is so well known that this kind of tracking exists that very few people actually do try and actually do insert mountable devices in their computers, which makes the tracking even easier.
• forgottenpass 10y ago
  [replying to a deleted post] I also found the SVN allegation to be circumstantial at best in the coverage that didn't focus on any other points. Installing a tool and downloading gigs of design data is a nuts-and-bolts operation for many disciplines (even for those that don't normally use version control but interact with a team that does). If Levandowski didn't typically access SVN on a frequent basis, it's still very circumstantial on it's own. Seeing this all laid out in the context of the surrounding allegations, it becomes an important and fairly damning point.
  • londons_explore 10y ago
    All the technical stuff seems fairly circumstantial. The USB sd card reader could just be so he could sync his holiday photos. The downloading of the entire SVN repository could just be so he could grep it for a file he didn't know the path to, or perhaps to try to compile something he wasn't sure the dependancies of. Reinstalling to linux could simply be because the software wouldn't build under windows. (it seems doubtful the self driving car uses a windows software stack).
• ryandrake 10y ago
  > By the time Otto was acquired, they had 91 employees. This seems like a lot of salary commitment to take on via self-funding by Otto’s four co-founders (all ex-Google). Were these founders previously Google executives or "9th engineer from the left" individual contributors? If you were getting exec pay, it might be semi-believable that you could come out of it and be able to self-fund salaries for 91 employees, but if the latter, I can't see how. Sure, Google pays engineers a lot but come on...
  • ghughes 10y ago
    According to Bloomberg, veteran Waymo employees were paid "F-you money". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reason-staffers-quit-google-s-car-project-the-company-paid-them-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      Thanks for the link. And they self-funded a startup, wow. Waymo money than I'll ever see...
• orbitingpluto 10y ago
  Hey, it's all part of the "sharing economy". Driver satisfaction will improve once it's composed entirely of autonomous vehicles. As for the real drivers, who are paid less than taxi drivers, I'm wondering how that put them into the red when they pay less than taxi companies and skirt regulations. They must have interesting books.
• vkou 10y ago
  Related HN thread on Uber acquiring Otto (From 7 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205 The consensus seems to be: "Huh, that's weird."
• tylercubell 10y ago
  This looks like a bunch of circumstantial evidence. The two LiDAR boards need to be compared to prove that Otto stole Waymo's IP.
  • cdolan 10y ago
    Did you miss the part where the schematic was shared from a 3rd party vendor? Seems like all the comparison you'd need to file a lawsuit
    • londons_explore 10y ago
      The boards are presented side by side in the documents, but redacted. I assume they must look similar enough to a non-technical judge for them to be presented in that form, or they would be presented with an expert analysis of the similarities. My guess is they are identical except the logos. The dimensions of the redaction boxes is very similar.
• aresant 10y ago
  - Google's recently revised goal for their program is to license to existing manufacturers vs. building a car. (1) - It's unlikely that whichever automotive company achieves autonomy first is going to immediately get into the ride sharing game, except perhaps Tesla but they don't have enough manufacturing capability (yet, or anytime soon) to be a global threat to Uber. - Uber is never going to be a manufacturer but they have partnered with Volvo and Daimler (2) recently who seem very amenable to licensing / leveraging third party tech to continue to be competitive in selling automobiles. - Why does Uber need to build autonomous tech vs license it? Are they concerned that the Google / Ford partnership is going to leave them out / decimated? (1) http://www.techtimes.com/articles/188654/20161213/alphabet-lowers-goals-for-google-self-driving-car-project-plan-for-no-steering-wheels-and-pedals-in-vehicles-put-on-hold.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/188654/20161213/alphabet-l... (2) http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14453704/uber-daimler-partnership-self-driving-cars-mercedes-benz-volvo http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14453704/uber-daimler-part...
  • Eridrus 10y ago
    > - It's unlikely that whichever automotive company achieves autonomy first is going to immediately get into the ride sharing game I think GM shows clear signs of interest of being in the ride sharing game if they have an advantage there. Would you rather be the first self-driving ride sharing company, and use that to displace Uber in high margin areas, or would you rather try to make a little bit of money off the premium segment buying these cars and then be a fast follower? The main argument for being a fast follower would be to let someone else deal with regulation for you, but otherwise being able to undercut everyone in rich markets seems like a no brainer that would bring a tonne of revenue and experience to the project very quickly.
    • csours 10y ago
      The buzzword is "mobility", and yes GM is already in the game, through pilot programs (Maven), Lyft and Cruise Automation. Disclaimer - I work for GM, but not on any of these things.
• bedhead 10y ago
  Among the circumstantial evidence, the self-funding aspect is what jumped out at me the most. This is the equivalent of a hedge fund manage buying something based on inside information, but only for his personal account. Why cut other people in on the wink-and-nod-guaranteed payday? Besides, Lewandowski couldn't realistically raise money through proper channels if his pitch amounted to, "I stole stuff from Waymo."
  • pm90 10y ago
    In hindsight, a better crook would have accepted outside funding just to cover this line of attack (Assuming the Otto Founder is guilty; of course it might be otherwise).
    • iandanforth 10y ago
      Due diligence during funding is designed to uncover these kinds of IP issues. That would probably have been a larger risk.
      • archerface 10y ago
        They could have taken capital from Uber to fund themselves and then waited longer for Uber to acquire them.
    • gwern 10y ago
      I think that's his point. In this scenario, you can't raise any meaningful amount of outside funding without either getting very lucky, coming clean about your crime, or raising very small amounts. You go to a prospective VC and tell them you're going to be a super-successful self-driving car with an exit of $1b. 'Why? What makes you so awesome?' 'Well...' Either you tell them the truth, you give up a large fraction of equity just to get a token $1m investment, or you go away with $10k for 1%. In the first case, they may blow the whistle on you; in the second case, you reduce your eventual payment by a lot just for some dubious plausibility; and in the third case, you have the hassle of outside investment for no real plausibility at all.
  • 10y ago
• payne92 10y ago
  I'll be curious to see if the Uber-Otto acquisition gets strained. It's common for the acquired company to make specific "representations and warranties", particularly around IP. "We own our IP and didn't steal it" is typical, and some percentage of the deal is held back for ~1-2 years in case there is a problem. But if there's fraud, all bets are off. Does Uber throw Otto under the bus? It would be "The Uber Way", based on what's been published recently.
  • MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
    I was under the impression the acquisition was a done deal as of August 2016? Hence why Waymo is suing Uber, not Otto.
    • mlvc 10y ago
      Every deal like this has a holdback escrow, exactly for situations like this. Breach of reps and warranties can be litigated post closing for fraud, which is the subject of negotiation over indemnities, a tug of war b/w both parties over how to allocate post closing risk.
  • halflings 10y ago
    The lawsuit is against Uber as they own Otto. I don't think Uber can just "throw Otto under the bus" at this point.
  • PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    Does Uber throw Otto under the bus? My prediction is that Kalanick and Levandowski will soon be attempting to throw each other under the bus to save their own job, money, and reputation. With any luck they will both wind up under a bus.
    • thewhitetulip 10y ago
      I have always wondered where such CEOs/founders end up post the fiasco.
• deleted 10y ago
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• nuggien 10y ago
  if it plays out that Lewandowski did intentionally steal trade secrets, the way he went about it was pretty boneheaded.
• transfire 10y ago
  > August 2016 - Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar payment from Google (presumably a bonus?) That's a pretty fat check for someone who just ran away with the crown jewels. How do we know Google didn't have Lavandowski do all this on purpose to lure Uber into a compromised position by buying Otto? Unless the courts are rigged, doesn't Google have to prove Uber acquired Otto with full knowledge that they were buying stolen property?
• pyb 10y ago
  Hmm, he got the name of one of the main protagonists wrong. Pierre Yves => Pierre-Yves Droz. You need to demonstrate some attention to detail, if you're going to claim an ability to 'read between the lines' in this dossier.
  • dantiberian 10y ago
    Thanks, I've fixed this.
• Animats 10y ago
  Uber, in their usual rule-breaking way, may come out OK on this. Suppose everything in the complaint against Uber is proven true. Google/Alphabet/Waymo gets an injunction against Uber using their rotating LIDAR, a clunky technology that's on the way out. (The future of high-volume 3D LIDAR is either flash with a staring sensor or MEMS with chip-sized moving mirrors.) G/A/W gets paid a few billion dollars, but far less than the $16 billion Intel just paid for Mobileye's inferior technology. Uber has enough cash for that.
  • memmcgee 10y ago
    They seem to be fundraising awfully quick for a company that has plenty of cash on hand. They'd probably have to fund-raise again or go public to pay off the damages.
    • Animats 10y ago
      Going public just got tougher for Uber. With a big lawsuit with merit hanging over them, their IPO value drops considerably. Underwriters don't like open-ended liabilities like that.
      • memmcgee 10y ago
        I also think the sexual harassment claims pose a massive liability. If the harassment is as wide spread as Fowler says it is, Uber could be looking at a massive class action lawsuit.
        • Animats 10y ago
          That's chump change on Uber's scale.
    • angus-prune 10y ago
      One of their strategies is to starve competitors of investment by hoovering up as much as they can themselves. This doesn't mean that they're in a good financial position, just that the signalling is different from other VC funded companies.
• transfire 10y ago
  Entitled "The Witch Hunt Continues" or "Why Americans can't have Nice things".
• peterjlee 10y ago
  Off topic but I'm going to assume anyone who misspelled Levandowski as Lewandowski is a soccer fan.
• vfclists 10y ago
  Does Daniel Compton live in the Far East, like Japan, New Zealand or something? The date of the blog post is March 14th. Is his calendar a day ahead?
  • dantiberian 10y ago
    New Zealand.
• drdre2001 10y ago
  Why didn't Uber hire Levandowski, instead of having him build a startup they could buy for hundreds of millions?
  • elsewhen 10y ago
    hiring a guy for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars might look strange to future investors, but buying a company for that much is commonplace. alternatively, they could have done it in the attempt to limit any potential liability (like this waymo lawsuit) to otto without risking the mothership (uber).
• eternalban 10y ago
  The bombshell is that Google uses SVN.
• pfarnsworth 10y ago
  Another big bombshell is that apparently Google laptops store every single thing you do on it, including whether you attach a USB drive, etc. That's pretty scary if you're an employee.
  • Tom1971 10y ago
    My wife's manager at big tech company used to get an email whenever she inserted a USB stick.
  • apetresc 10y ago
    Everyone at Google knows about that. There's nothing scary about it, it's a work laptop.
• coleca 10y ago
  What happened with Uber's Pittsburgh research facility? I thought that was the hub for their self-driving car program? http://fortune.com/2016/03/21/uber-carnegie-mellon-partnership/ http://fortune.com/2016/03/21/uber-carnegie-mellon-partnersh...
  • cdolan 10y ago
    It's still chugging along. Volvos and Ford Focus with LiDAR scoot around town daily. The ATC (advanced technology center) is fully staffed and operational. Pittsburgh also recently got some sort of certification/designation as a sort of "robotic testing ground" for autonomous driving, I think by the US government?
• deleted 10y ago
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• sevensor 10y ago
  So at this point, Uber's name is mud, and they're getting tons of bad press. Does there exist a contrary interpretation of recent events in which Uber is still somehow OK as an employer or a business? In my news bubble, I haven't seen any.
• spikels 10y ago
  I just hope this doesn't somehow delay the deployment of much safer driving technology. The death, injury and property damage statistic are staggering: Global Annual Estimates: Deaths: 1.25 million Injuries: 20-50 million Cost: $580 billion https://www.cdc.gov/features/globalroadsafety/ https://www.cdc.gov/features/globalroadsafety/
• achikin 10y ago
  Where is my confidential and proprietary information, Levandowski? Where is it?
• deleted 10y ago
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• free_everybody 10y ago
  I read the whole article and it was very interesting. Thanks for the info! However, could someone explain to me why Uber is losing money from their taxi services? Obviously the drivers take home a large chunk of revenue, but what about the rest of the money they receive from the fares? Shouldn't that be enough to cover the overhead of running a mobile app? Are they trying to do too much? What gives?
  • clay_to_n 10y ago
    Everything else they're invested in. Subsidizing rides (in new markets I think they sometimes pay the drivers more than the passenger pays) maybe. But new R&D, lik building self-driving cars, doesn't come cheap.
    • martinald 10y ago
      I think people are really underestimating how generous these subsidies are. They're not usually on the riders side, but the drivers. In Edinburgh, Scotland over NYE all Uber drives were on £75/hr minimum, regardless of how many rides they took. A friend of a friend who decided to ride for them that night said he was out for about 7 hours and picked up about 10 people the whole night (was very busy after midnight but quiet otherwise). The fares totalled about £150. So Uber probably got £30 but subsidised the driver by £525. Pretty crazy if you times this by all the 'newer' markets uber is in.
  • seansmccullough 10y ago
    The drivers are being paid more per ride than riders are paying for a ride. Let's say an Uber ride costs a passenger $10, and the driver is paid $15. Uber loses $5.
    • aianus 10y ago
      This is not true in Toronto where I am a part time Uber driver. I've never received any sort of incentive or bonus. Uber is still extremely popular with both drivers and passengers. Note, this may be because Uber has no competition here and is already 50% cheaper than taxis. However it still illustrates that Uber can certainly operate with positive profit margins.
• olegious 10y ago
  "the information" had a great article on Uber's finances recently. One of the stats cited was from an internal Uber study that said moving to a fleet of self driving cars would only achieve a 5-10% profit margin for the company.
• rsp1984 10y ago
  (Possible) Consequences: ... Without any way to raise more money or reduce their costs, Uber runs out of money and folds. Highly unlikely. Why? Investors who stomach multi-billion dollar annual losses will probably just shrug off a mere lawsuit or a "bad media narrative". If the choice is to either write off $15 billion or to give another couple to help the company go through a rough patch (what a buying opportunity!) I think I know what investors are going to do. They may demand Kalanick's head in the process (and I think they will -- not that it would really hurt him much personally though...) but seriously a whole nother level of crap would have to happen before investors start getting comfortable with the thought of letting go those $15 billion.
  • trprog 10y ago
    As they say, if you owe the bank $100 you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100 million the bank has a problem.
• chaser7016 10y ago
  Burn Uber and leave only ashes in KalaDick's hands to teach him humility! Lyft and others will rightfully take its place. No one more deserves and needs this type of lesson then that sociopath!
  • chaser7016 10y ago
    So he doesn't deserve this or You don't like the nickname he inspires?
    • chaser7016 10y ago
      Oh you guys want to stay on his and his current friend's good side. I could care less Silicon Valley already chewed me up and spit me out because I'm a nice guy with ethics and morality who invents cool shit, yet not a bro.
  • sctb 10y ago
    Please stop rage-posting against Uber. We're here for civil and substantive discussion, including on controversial topics.
• randyrand 10y ago
  I still love Uber and will continue to use them. They provide a great service: point A to B at a good price and no hassles. That's why I use them. I don't care at all about the rest of the drama. It's hard to even keep up with it. I suspect most people are the same.
  • c_r_w 10y ago
    It is easy to love a company that is tossing free money at you to use their service. It will be harder to love them if/when they are a de facto monopoly on public transportation and are limiting service and raising fees to recoup their years of investor subsidies. Enjoy your cheap rides!
    • randyrand 10y ago
      thanks!
• multinglets 10y ago
  The notion that these companies are meaningfully suing each other over "trade secrets" as opposed to "government help" is rather laughable to me. Fuck Google and their attempted U.S.-sanctioned digital monopoly on Earth.
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• aarontyree 10y ago
  The internet is being absorbed by greed and hunger for power. I hope that somewhere in northern Finland, there is an awkward teenager writing something that will later be known as, "The Great Decentralizer"
• hossbeast 10y ago
  Does Levandowski go to prison if this all bears out in court?
• hossbeast 10y ago
  The most horrifying aspect of this story is people using SVN in 2016.
  • emcq 10y ago
    SVN is popular for hardware groups. Why? Better sparse checkout than git when you are dealing with large binary design files. It's not what git is optimized for.
• flylib 10y ago
  "That Otto hadn’t received funding from any VC’s is unusual. With 91 employees, getting paid $150k/year (this might even be too low given they are working on self-driving cars, one of the hottest spaces in tech right now), they would have had a $13.6 million/year burn rate just on salaries. Otto always aimed to get to market quickly, but getting to profitability without funding seems like it would have been very hard, especially on the accelerated timescale they were working towards and the need to likely hire many more people to get to production. All of Otto’s public self-driving car and truck competitors have taken venture funding. However, as someone working on a bootstrapped SaaS application, I’m sympathetic to wanting to self-fund." Anthony Levandowski has a personal net worth in the hundreds of millions, that is not counting the other founders plus they could raise money at a whim, or get acquired whenever they wanted "The next day, January 15, 2016, Mr. Levandowski’s venture 280 Systems - which became OttoMotto LLC - was officially formed (though it remained in stealth mode for several months). On January 27, 2016, Mr. Levandowski resigned from Waymo without notice. And on February 1, 2016, Mr. Levandowski’s venture Otto Trucking was officially formed (also remaining in stealth mode for several months)." not sure if that timeline is accurate, any way to check when the ot.to website was registered? the site used for looking up http://whois.domaintools.com/280systems.com http://whois.domaintools.com/280systems.com doesn't work for ot.to
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • bitmapbrother 10y ago
    Where does it say Anthony Levandowski is worth hundreds of millions?
    • Fricken 10y ago
      Levandowski sold 3 companies to Google for a rumoured 500 million. He then received another massive undisclosed sum for meeting benchmarks on Google's self driving car program, along with several other key team members.
• cft 10y ago
  Sounds terrible but probably Uber will pay $200mm confidential settlement and have the know how. Sounds like a win for Uber...
  • fullshark 10y ago
    Google doesn't want or need only $200 million dollars.
• jgalt212 10y ago
  Was the Otto sale the quickest $680MM ever made? Has anyone gone from zero that amount (exit price, mind you) in that short a period of time? For those reasons alone, I think there is definitely something fishy going on. Perhaps not as fishy as Daniel claims, but something just does not smell right here.
• mikepurvis 10y ago
  No relationship between Uber's Ottomotto and the self-driving vehicles of OTTO Motors: https://www.ottomotors.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/otto-motors-releases-statement-on-waymo-v-ottomotto-lawsuit https://www.ottomotors.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/o... Disclosure: employee of Clearpath, the company behind OTTO Motors.
  • obstinate 10y ago
    What an unfortunate coincidence that your names are so similar. Hopefully there will be as little PR fallout for you as possible.
  • Fricken 10y ago
    And we don't want to confuse Otto motors or Ottomotto with Ottomatika, the CMU AV spinoff acquired by Delphi.
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• tmsldd 10y ago
  Fumus boni iuris
• quickConclusion 10y ago
  If all of this is true, the logical end to me, not suggested by the author, is that Google buys Uber. For less money than anyone could. Travis is out. Makes industrial sense for Google to be in that business too.
  • eridius 10y ago
    Why? Uber's technology is literally stolen from Google. What would Google gain by buying them?
    • andrewflnr 10y ago
      The userbase and momentum.
• ziszis 10y ago
  Just the way companies incur technical debt, there is also ethical debt. It is accumulated by taking ethical shortcuts and avoiding painful decisions (a case I have seen several times is letting star devs/sales misbehave). Eventually the payment on the ethical debt comes due. In Uber's case, they have been building it up for a long time without any down payment. A hard cleaning is needed from top to bottom.
• gesman 10y ago
  More interesting version: Google will let Levandowdki off the hook for testifying against Uber. Mission accomplished.
• dustinmoris 10y ago
  When it comes to the self driving car business I really hope Alphabet kicks Uber's ass, because as a consumer I must trust the car to do the best in my interest and safety and I don't trust Uber for a second. This company would do every dodgy thing to become quickly profitable. I rather trust Alphabet or Tesla.
• friendzis 10y ago
  Strangely I do not see this said in discussions about Uber, but I think they are operating in a way on good publicity and the false premise of Uber being ride-sharing, which is not really the case. Compared to other services in this market, e.g. taxis or buses, Uber has a significant portion operation costs implicitly discounted and/or indirectly subsidised. Uber drivers are self-employed, which in many parts of the world has lower tax rate as opposed to employment contracts (which is pretty common for bus drivers). Uber cars are registered as non-commercial vehicles with less restrictions inherently increasing utility value (a family can have one car used for Uber and weekend driving, but having a Taxi car may very likely result in the need for another car) and non-commercial insurance rate despite increased accident risk, which results in elevated overall risk of non-commercial vehicles which all (non Uber) drivers must share. Bad press for Uber may result in law changes that level the playing field and either increase operation costs for Uber significantly increasing their burn rate or lower operation costs for their competitors decreasing Uber's attractiveness and revenue thus increasing burn rate.
• thedonkeycometh 10y ago
  This doesn't seem to affect Ubers current bombshell, and the overarching tale of Levandowski's poaching is pretty well documented already. They're just fighting over licensing. OP is, IMHO, exaggerating for hyperbolic effect. This won't hurt Uber in the ways he thinks it will.
• Aissen 10y ago
  Just a thought… Isn't it one of those things where Google has access to so much data, they could acquire (illegally) some of it from their servers, and then use parallel construction for finding other evidence ?
• stefek99 10y ago
  That is gross. Uber - all the recent examples - it must be truly exceptional environment. Stellar growth, massive burn rate... I would imagine they are profitable, cashing 25% of the total fee?