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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#81

Post by harryh »

viggity wrote: post #75
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.

As I said, they aren't doing that.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#83

Post by thrill »

ontoillogical wrote: post #64
thrill wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stor…

>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?

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.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#84

Post by ghughes »

ryandrake wrote: post #71

> 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…

According to Bloomberg, veteran Waymo employees were paid "F-you money". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#86

Post by tannhauser23 »

techthroway443 wrote: post #73
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?

Because lawsuits can drag on for years (if not decades!) and Google is a major investor in Uber. Google/Waymo might not want to actually destroy the company.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#88

Post by ryandrake »

mmanfrin wrote: post #59

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.

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.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#89

Post by beefman »

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…

What is the correct percentage?
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