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Uber admits ex-CEO Kalanick knew Levandowski had stolen Google information

83 points by wfunction 9y ago

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
Had Kalanick never heard the story of the Monkey's paw before he used the thing?
- 7ewis 9y ago
  If others haven't heard of it either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw
parsnipsumthing 9y ago
Travis Kalanick is clearly an adrenaline junkie. I understand the start-up CEOs need to be bold but he seems to completely lack the ability to evaluate and minimize risk. Good strategy isn't just about winning every battle, it's also about avoiding the battles you don't need to fight. Travis seems like he's never seen a fight he won't jump into. It's wild.
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  That reminds me of Sun Tzu. It also reminds me of, I forget who, maybe Jobs, who said not to even compete, just make your competition irrelevant. Ie. Find a way to not even have to fight the battles.
  - rtx 9y ago
    Uber can't make government irrelevant.
whack 9y ago
One of the key points is buried a few paragraphs in. > "Uber, though, says Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber... The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." I have no way of knowing if the above is true, but if so, it paints Kalanick in a far more positive light than the headline suggests.
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  Depends if he winked while saying it. The skeptic in me just sees it as a cover-your-ass move.
  - floogtheunfound 9y ago
    This should have triggered the guys immediate removal, admitting to taking proprietary information from his former employer. “Hey roommate; I robbed a gas station!” “Well, just don’t use the money to pay the cable bill.”
- pzh 9y ago
  It sounds more like they decided to throw Levandowski under the bus. Whether any of that is true or not, they know that it's already an established fact that Levandowski had the disks with Google information and they can't keep pretending they didn't know. The only reasonable course of action is for them to admit that they knew, but that Levandowski was the sole bad actor, and they didn't want anything to do with the stolen information.
  - dmourati 9y ago
    I think you mean they decided to throw Levandowski under the self-driving truck.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Levandowski threw himself under the bus. One with a very large "G" logo on the hood.
- sriram_sun 9y ago
  So is this a fair characterization of the conversation? L: I've access to Google's lidar designs if we ever need them. K: Burn it bro. I don't want that stuff traced to us. I'll still buy you out. Levandowki ends up using the (already stolen) designs anyway as revealed in the accidental email from the 3rd party vendor.
  - 9y ago
covercash 9y ago
What's the worst case scenario for Levandowski in this situation?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Theft is criminal law.
  - ndr 9y ago
    How many million dollars would he keep for each year spent in jail?
    - mabbo 9y ago
      The civil lawsuit against him would take care of any money he has left.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    But making and exfiltrating copies of data isn't theft as defined in criminal law (it may be criminal, but not as theft.)
jacquesm 9y ago
I suspect this is one of the reasons he stepped down.
jpeg_hero 9y ago
Way overblown headline relative to the filing that 3 long days ago. I am no fan of Uber but this AP writer is terribly sloppy in his formulations. > Uber knew fired exec had info at center of Google theft case Absolutely not what it says in the filing. All the filing says is Lewendowski tells Travis he has five “disks” of data from google. It could be a backup of his pst files, roll out plans for Orkut, cafeteria menues, we have no idea from the filing. So the filing is very far away from both Uber “admitting” it knew and that this data is the “stolen information” central to this case. > The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them. So sloppy it’s painful. This implies than Lewendowski propositioned Travis and said “let’s go build this dirty LIDAR together” and Travis declined. Not supported by the filings! The incident this refers to was an email thread between Travis and Lewendowski that had two lawyers Cc’d on. This was perfunctory Dislosure that he has some info, and a perfunctory response from Travis saying “don’t bring any info from prior employers.” If you are going to make a dirty LIDAR you hand off a usb drive on a long walk across the city, not plot in front of your lawyers. Again, I am no Uber fan, but this is one of the worst pieces of reporting I’ve seen that I can remember. Very misleading article.
- watwut 9y ago
  It is quite unlikely that five disks would contain cafeteria menus. I don't thing that judge would buy such theory as plausible. In any case, it is goggle data even if not related to cars. Another question, why would you kept lawyer out of loop if planning to do something dirty? It is dumb to do it over mail, but lawyer won't rat you put and can have advice about how best to hide it (in person not in writing sInce lawyer want to keep license).
iaw 9y ago
> "The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." A person that takes a trove of proprietary information like that is unlikely to just destroy it. My suspicion is that he'd keep it for reference until it became a liability.
smcl 9y ago
Didn't they originally deny that there was any sort of wrongdoing? If so then why should we believe them now? What I mean is 1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything" 2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him" Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Well there's a slight difference, it seems like now that Kalanick has left, they want to use him as a scapegoat, and the narrative here is that Uber as a whole didn't know until now. So theoretically, 1 & 2 could both be true, albeit 2 would be more like "Kalanick knew but didn't tell us".
  - smcl 9y ago
    True, but if so that's still extremely convenient. Edit: Pardon my cynicism - I'm just a bit suspicious with things like this :-)
cylinder 9y ago
Deep in my comment history I called Kalanick shady many times before all these headlines...
sctb 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196
- wfunction 9y ago
  Is this actually a dupe? Old one says Waymo is making an allegation, this one is saying Uber itself is admitting this...
emilsedgh 9y ago
Does anyone know how was Levandowski's startup valued at $680M? Worst case scenario was that Kalanick not only knew this, actually planned it with Levandowski. Reasoning behind the $680M acquisition could be very important.

83 points by wfunction 9y ago

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

Had Kalanick never heard the story of the Monkey's paw before he used the thing?

7ewis 9y ago
If others haven't heard of it either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw

parsnipsumthing 9y ago

Travis Kalanick is clearly an adrenaline junkie. I understand the start-up CEOs need to be bold but he seems to completely lack the ability to evaluate and minimize risk. Good strategy isn't just about winning every battle, it's also about avoiding the battles you don't need to fight. Travis seems like he's never seen a fight he won't jump into. It's wild.

Waterluvian 9y ago
That reminds me of Sun Tzu. It also reminds me of, I forget who, maybe Jobs, who said not to even compete, just make your competition irrelevant. Ie. Find a way to not even have to fight the battles.
- rtx 9y ago
  Uber can't make government irrelevant.

whack 9y ago

One of the key points is buried a few paragraphs in. > "Uber, though, says Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber... The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." I have no way of knowing if the above is true, but if so, it paints Kalanick in a far more positive light than the headline suggests.

Waterluvian 9y ago
Depends if he winked while saying it. The skeptic in me just sees it as a cover-your-ass move.
- floogtheunfound 9y ago
  This should have triggered the guys immediate removal, admitting to taking proprietary information from his former employer. “Hey roommate; I robbed a gas station!” “Well, just don’t use the money to pay the cable bill.”
pzh 9y ago
It sounds more like they decided to throw Levandowski under the bus. Whether any of that is true or not, they know that it's already an established fact that Levandowski had the disks with Google information and they can't keep pretending they didn't know. The only reasonable course of action is for them to admit that they knew, but that Levandowski was the sole bad actor, and they didn't want anything to do with the stolen information.
- dmourati 9y ago
  I think you mean they decided to throw Levandowski under the self-driving truck.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Levandowski threw himself under the bus. One with a very large "G" logo on the hood.
sriram_sun 9y ago
So is this a fair characterization of the conversation? L: I've access to Google's lidar designs if we ever need them. K: Burn it bro. I don't want that stuff traced to us. I'll still buy you out. Levandowki ends up using the (already stolen) designs anyway as revealed in the accidental email from the 3rd party vendor.
- 9y ago

covercash 9y ago

What's the worst case scenario for Levandowski in this situation?

jacquesm 9y ago
Theft is criminal law.
- ndr 9y ago
  How many million dollars would he keep for each year spent in jail?
  - mabbo 9y ago
    The civil lawsuit against him would take care of any money he has left.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  But making and exfiltrating copies of data isn't theft as defined in criminal law (it may be criminal, but not as theft.)

jacquesm 9y ago

I suspect this is one of the reasons he stepped down.

jpeg_hero 9y ago

Way overblown headline relative to the filing that 3 long days ago. I am no fan of Uber but this AP writer is terribly sloppy in his formulations. > Uber knew fired exec had info at center of Google theft case Absolutely not what it says in the filing. All the filing says is Lewendowski tells Travis he has five “disks” of data from google. It could be a backup of his pst files, roll out plans for Orkut, cafeteria menues, we have no idea from the filing. So the filing is very far away from both Uber “admitting” it knew and that this data is the “stolen information” central to this case. > The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them. So sloppy it’s painful. This implies than Lewendowski propositioned Travis and said “let’s go build this dirty LIDAR together” and Travis declined. Not supported by the filings! The incident this refers to was an email thread between Travis and Lewendowski that had two lawyers Cc’d on. This was perfunctory Dislosure that he has some info, and a perfunctory response from Travis saying “don’t bring any info from prior employers.” If you are going to make a dirty LIDAR you hand off a usb drive on a long walk across the city, not plot in front of your lawyers. Again, I am no Uber fan, but this is one of the worst pieces of reporting I’ve seen that I can remember. Very misleading article.

watwut 9y ago
It is quite unlikely that five disks would contain cafeteria menus. I don't thing that judge would buy such theory as plausible. In any case, it is goggle data even if not related to cars. Another question, why would you kept lawyer out of loop if planning to do something dirty? It is dumb to do it over mail, but lawyer won't rat you put and can have advice about how best to hide it (in person not in writing sInce lawyer want to keep license).

iaw 9y ago

> "The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." A person that takes a trove of proprietary information like that is unlikely to just destroy it. My suspicion is that he'd keep it for reference until it became a liability.

smcl 9y ago

Didn't they originally deny that there was any sort of wrongdoing? If so then why should we believe them now? What I mean is 1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything" 2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him" Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?

ehsankia 9y ago
Well there's a slight difference, it seems like now that Kalanick has left, they want to use him as a scapegoat, and the narrative here is that Uber as a whole didn't know until now. So theoretically, 1 & 2 could both be true, albeit 2 would be more like "Kalanick knew but didn't tell us".
- smcl 9y ago
  True, but if so that's still extremely convenient. Edit: Pardon my cynicism - I'm just a bit suspicious with things like this :-)

cylinder 9y ago

Deep in my comment history I called Kalanick shady many times before all these headlines...

sctb 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196

wfunction 9y ago
Is this actually a dupe? Old one says Waymo is making an allegation, this one is saying Uber itself is admitting this...

emilsedgh 9y ago

Does anyone know how was Levandowski's startup valued at $680M? Worst case scenario was that Kalanick not only knew this, actually planned it with Levandowski. Reasoning behind the $680M acquisition could be very important.