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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#281

Post by jsmthrowaway »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #252
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.

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 i…

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?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#282

Post by 55555 »

angersock wrote: post #275
pfarnsworth wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

So, do you work for Uber full-time, or are you just shilling as a contract gig?

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.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#283

Post by st3v3r »

ptero wrote: post #245
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…

Removing a CEO based simply on allegations sounds to me as a pretty extreme response. Would you feel the same if the company in question would not be Uber (whose CEO may be a liability for Uber ATM anyway) but, say, IBM? This is an honest question.

To be honest, given the history of Uber's CEO, I think he's no longer afforded the benefit of the doubt. The onus would be on him to prove to the board that these accusations are not true.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#284

Post by aianus »

seansmccullough wrote: post #266
free_everybody wrote: post #255

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?

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.

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.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#285

Post by aianus »

asimov_ wrote: post #188
transfire wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except that breaking the law has been Uber's business model since day 1. So tired of hearing this. It's just parrots talking in the echo chamber. Show me a court verdict that Uber broke the law.

"Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-s... "Uber settles driver lawsuit over background checks, to pay $7.5 million" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit-idUSKCN0Z12GS "Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the…

Settlements are not admissions of guilt.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#286

Post by [deleted] »

gumby wrote: post #233
dnautics wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> 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]

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#287

Post by zeptomu »

cvwright wrote: post #93
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.

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 http://grr-response.blogspot.com/

Funny note: these screenshots show an AWS instance :)

https://github.com/google/grr/blob/gh-pages/screenshots/Scre...

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#288

Post by thrill »

ptero wrote: post #245
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…

Removing a CEO based simply on allegations sounds to me as a pretty extreme response. Would you feel the same if the company in question would not be Uber (whose CEO may be a liability for Uber ATM anyway) but, say, IBM? This is an honest question.

Maybe. CEOs are indeed a lightening rod for criticism, good or bad. One hopes the BOD has the intel needed to evaluate the situation, but I can tell you from experience, if someone makes a minimal effort to hide their actions, especially if they are a CEO who's been permitted to do whatever he wanted to that point, then it's more of a burden for that BOD to perform proper diligence. As a BOD member, I don't want burdens - I want clarity and confirmability - if I can't get that without significant effort, then that's not an organization that I want to advise.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#289

Post by NathanKP »

partiallypro wrote: post #280
NathanKP wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be really interested in seeing what happens if Uber can't recover from the burn rate and make a sustainable business without self driving. I can see in the best possible scenario we end up with more cities like Austin, Texas that have their own nonprofit ride sharing app. I actually have huge respect for what Austin did in banning Uber and Lyft and making their own app (Ride Austin) that isn't designed to make i…

How is what Austin did good? It dissuades capital investment and innovation. City governments were why rides were so expensive and service was poor for decades upon decades. Taxi licensing and medallions priced out everyone. Soon Austin's city government could easily be "captured" and limit the number of drivers, driving up ride prices and stifling competition. That wouldn't be market demand driving (unlike surge pri…

> That's actually why they passed the measure in the first place, the taxi lobby was incredibly strong.

No the measure passed because Uber and Lyft failed to understand Austin culture and shot themselves in the foot by annoying Austinites with intrusive tactics that made them look bad in the eyes of a local culture that tends to be fiercely anti big business. It's the same type of mistake Airbnb made in SF with their big marketing campaign of 2015 that just offended everyone.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#290

Post by mlvc »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #203
payne92 wrote: post #109

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", b…

I was under the impression the acquisition was a done deal as of August 2016? Hence why Waymo is suing Uber, not Otto.

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.
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