5 ms·
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 Ube
by 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 agoDepends if he winked while saying it. The skeptic in me just sees it as a cover-your-ass move.
- floogtheunfound 9y agoThis 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 agoIt 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.
- sriram_sun 9y agoSo 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.
- floogtheunfound 9y agoThat would make Uber’s retention of this guy suspect; they knew he and Otto had stolen google IP and still acquired.
- amluto 9y agoIf I were a CEO and a potential new hire told me he had stolen confidential information, there's no way I'd hire him. Even ignoring lawsuits, I'd be worried that he would turn around and steal my confidential information.
- tedivm 9y agoTwice now I've interviewed candidates who in the interview offered to share confidential information from their company with me. In both cases we not only did not hire them, we made it a point to note why we didn't hire them in case they ever applied again in the future. Once someone admits that they are willing to steal information and basically sell it to other companies there really is no excuse to hire them unless you really want that information. You can't trust them not to steal from you in the future, and even if you don't use the information it's going to be hard to prove that fact if the theft eventually gets discovered. To be blunt the fact that Travis supposedly told him to destroy the information doesn't make him look much better to me at all. Knowing that Levandowski straight up stole from Google and hiring him anyways makes Travis look either ridiculously incompetent or straight up malicious.
- iaw 9y ago> it paints Kalanick in a far more positive light than the headline suggests. Not to me, if I'm doing business with someone and they say "oh, I also stole this other stuff you might like" I'd take that as a red flag about their ethical fortitude. The actually appropriate thing to do would be to Google/Waymo of the potential IP threat and insulate Uber from future legal repercussions. Walk away from the acquisition. The behavior is still unethical.
- scarface74 9y agoThe actually appropriate thing to do would be to [tell] Google/Waymo of the potential IP threat and insulate Exactly. That's what Pepsi did. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/07/06/pepsi-alerted-coca-cola-to-stolen-coke-secrets-offer.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/07/06/pepsi-alerted-coca-c...