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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#71

Post by ryandrake »

> 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...

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#72

Post by GCA10 »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #62
GCA10 wrote: post #58

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/S…

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.

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-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-settleme...

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#73

Post by techthroway443 »

GCA10 wrote: post #58

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/S…

Why would Uber be awarded licensing terms they could "live with" for code they (allegedly) outright stole from a competitor?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#74

Post by wavefunction »

wyldfire wrote: post #31

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)

"accidentally copied"

Thank god for the honest among us.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#75

Post by viggity »

harryh wrote: post #29

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-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 repet…

I know companies subsidize product costs to get larger market share, but subsidizing 59% seems a bit crazy.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#76

Post by Oletros »

temp246810 wrote: post #18

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 stre…

> against google over stolen smart phone ideas.

What phone ideas stole Google?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#77

Post by orbitingpluto »

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.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#78

Post by [deleted] »

GCA10 wrote: post #58

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/S…

[deleted]

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#79

Post by jwr »

dantiberian wrote: post #5
beering wrote: post #2

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.

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.

When I skimmed the original articles, that is exactly what I guessed — e.g. no way this was a coincidence.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#80

Post by oh_sigh »

d--b wrote: post #32

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?"

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.
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