Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 134 posts

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#101

Post by yawaworht12 »

SilasX wrote: post #86
timewarrior wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest cost in this business is the human component. For that all you need to do is check the price difference between renting for a day or getting taxi for a day. Given a choice, Uber would love to be the first to have self driving cars. Once they do that their business model scales predictably with capital. Whoever gets self driving technology right, will own all transportation and logistics - which is…

But note that Uber doesn't become superprofitable from SDCs unless they're the only ones with them; otherwise, they have to cut prices in line with the other SDC-ride-hailing apps. Even under an optimistic scenario, might have a two-year SDC monopoly, after which others can offer the same product. That's still not nearly long enough to justify the valuation.

No company is going to have a monopoly of self driving cars. Uber just needs to get them at the same time as everyone else to with either through build or buy. The main reason for doing as much building now is to have a sizable patent portfolio for defensive reasons. Google bought Motorola's patents to protect them while they competed with Apple.

With this in mind, how does anyone else compete without burning through far more money trying to gain market share. Uber burned through the money trying to be efficient when the market was much smaller. Once the market is much much larger, any competitor will have to burn through a orders of maginitude more cash to buy market share.

There's a lot more to succeeding in this market than self driving cars.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#102

Post by gt2 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #64
diebir wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you figure that it would be "shut down" and what does this mean in practical terms?

The court orders them to stop using any code or designs that were touched by former Google employees, AKA all of their code and designs. They would then have to hire a new team of people who never worked at Google, or with the former Googlers, and do a "clean room" reimplementation of a self driving vehicle, based on publically available materials and tools.

How practical is enforcing that?

Can the knowledge they already obtained really be undone?

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#103

Post by yawaworht12 »

xapata wrote: post #99
justicezyx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could go public anytime they want. Why? I cannot believe Uber's status-quo supports its valuation at all.

You say that like public stock shareholders are more discerning than other kinds of investors.

As someone that worked on Wall Street, most HNers aren't any better than Main Street investors. In many ways I'd say they are worse. Specifically, the level of emotion some people have on HN when it comes to liking or disliking companies based on their pet issues leads them to make some financially asinine statements. If you want to make money in the capital markets, you have to be dispassionate, making your decisions based on financials and fundamentals.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#104

Post by yawaworht12 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #64
diebir wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you figure that it would be "shut down" and what does this mean in practical terms?

The court orders them to stop using any code or designs that were touched by former Google employees, AKA all of their code and designs. They would then have to hire a new team of people who never worked at Google, or with the former Googlers, and do a "clean room" reimplementation of a self driving vehicle, based on publically available materials and tools.

Schadenfreude aside, I hope others realize how evil this outcome would be. California is a great place because it doesn't enforce anti-employee provisions like non-compete agreements.

Seeing maybe the LIDAR efforts suffer a temporary setback, but any outcome that blocks all the work of all the engineers that all exercised their at-will rights to work for a different company is not something any engineer should be celebrating.

There's a lot more to SDCs than a LIDAR device and the engineers at Uber were working on all these different areas well before Otto even existed.

If Google sought to actually shut everything down, then they will have strayed very very far from the "Don't be evil" mantra and would be the company that truly deserves negative criticism IMHO.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#105

Post by yawaworht12 »

Operyl wrote: post #2

And the plot thickens. If Waymo is correct, and such a contract was signed, they seem to be as good as toast.

It thickens more. Supposedly Larry Page talked to Levandowski before he left Google:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/uber-wa...

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#106

Post by nikanj »

woodandsteel wrote: post #57
ziszis wrote: post #20

I assume that Otto execs indemnified Uber with respect to the intellectual property, given that it was a primary value in the acquisition. If so, Uber can claw back the $680M they spent. If not, it would be the worst IP miss since Ebay acquired Skype for $2 Billion, only to find out that they didn't own Skype's IP or have access to the source code [0]. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/new-lawsuit-brings-clarity.…

>I assume that Otto execs indemnified Uber with respect to the intellectual property, given that it was a primary value in the acquisition. If so, Uber can claw back the $680M they spent. Uber's big problem is not the $680 million. It's that if Waymo's claims are true, then Uber's self-driving car program will likely be shut down, and they will have to start all over from scratch. And that in turn means other compani…

For some values of scratch, anyway. If you show me a complete design for a system, allow me to play around with prototypes for a year and peruse the documentation, forcing me to delete all the files afterwards will not take away all the things I've learned.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#107

Post by yawaworht12 »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #9

Perhaps this is standard practice, in the valley, to make the company that acquired your company defend you in the event that the acquisition resulted in a lawsuit, but this revelation just adds another red flag to the already long list of red flags that Uber ignored when acquiring Otto. IMO, Uber clearly knew what he did, either through disclosure or due diligence, and disregarded it. Considering their company cultu…

I don't know about Silicon Valley, but I've had such a provision in one previous employment contract because the position was high enough up that I'd be legally liable.

The clause was added by my lawyer because he said it was standard practice to have it if you're the officer of a company or in a position where to possibility of liability exists. I would expect anyone signing a non-standard run-of-the-mill at-will employment contract would have their own lawyer and that any good lawyer would ask for such a provision.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#108

Post by nikanj »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #25
guelo wrote: post #22

Where's the district attorney? If someone is claiming the 5th because he might be incriminated that seems like pretty strong probable cause for a criminal investigation.

There's nothing wrong or shady about claiming the 5th. It's an important legal protection. Why would you seek to diminish or undermine something that might one day protect you?

On TV, claiming any of your legal rights means you're guilty - and trying to get away with it. Many people assume this also applies to the real world.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#109

Post by [deleted] »

abpavel wrote: post #98
timewarrior wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Unless they have a monopoly on self driving technology (which I seriously doubt). On the other hand, I feel that we will not have self driving cars for a really long time. Instead I believe we will have flying cars before that, who will solve the last mile problem. They will take you from the house to the hub and hub to the final destination. Buses can transport people between hubs. With self driving cars you…

> No existing regulations (unless at risk of being in flight path). Obviously you haven't had your flight lessons yet. Not only there are scores of airspace regulations, but flying is a much harder task to do as well. The freedom you're thinking off is akin to freely driving in a 4x4 on an open ranch, which has more to do with joy, and less with transportation needs.

[deleted]

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#110

Post by fstuff »

djsumdog wrote: post #84
mandeepj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running a fleet of self-driving cars is running a car rental company. I am very surprised this comment got the top votes. OP - in which world do you live in? Uber already lease out vehicles so people who don't have a car but want to drive for Uber.... can lease it out from them. Uber does not have to maintain their cars. They can sign an AMC with some company.

I was not aware drivers could lease vehicles from Uber. I assumed they couldn't because I once reserved a ReachNow car, only to find an Uber driver setting up in it. He had ended his ride by accident, and was on the phone with their customer service. He was talking about needing to start work. The customer service rep said there was another car nearby (it was 2 blocks away when I looked at the app). The guy then says…

I don't know what reach now is but ubers leasing program is called exchange lease. Its scummy as hell. Anyone can get approved if they agree to drive for uber. A Toyota corolla is 150 a week and your fairs pay the lease. If they cur rates or itw a slow week you're underwater. Lots of people got screwed when the cut rates and had to drive for uber just to break even

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti...

Post reply on HN