231–240 of 305 posts
I would think Google's argument would only need to be "Uber spent $600M on a 9-month old company". That alone is a huge red-flag, no?
Google spent $1600M on a 18-months old company. Youtube starts in April 2005. Is bought by Google October 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
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He (most likely) forfeited his as of yet unvested $250 million in Uber stock he received as part of the acquisition. I suppose some innocent people would walk from $250 million on the advice of their lawyer, but not many.
Depending on how much he currently has wealth-wise, his reputation and credibility here might be worth much more than that in the long run. He's still a bright engineer who could go on to do things in the self-driving car space. His expertise and exposure to the most cutting-edge IP is worth quite a bit. The less damage he gets out of this legally and the less dirt thrown on his name the more he will be able to turn…
My, admittedly cynical, take is much simpler, his lawyer sat him down and said something along the lines of: "screw the 250 million, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay out of prison".
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It's very common for hardware vendors and hardware teams to have extremely long email chains where they copy everyone involved for the length of the project. I imagine that the vendor copied the old Google colleagues by mistake. Misdirected emails happen. I was even recently called by a vendor on my cell phone (side effect of open offices: no office phone) for an old company that wanted to talk about the sensors they…
It's crazy how common this is in even very sensitive cases. There should be a rule based system in place that makes it troublesome to email people not associated to a certain project.
I would think Google's argument would only need to be "Uber spent $600M on a 9-month old company". That alone is a huge red-flag, no?
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Google alleges he then copied the files onto a portable hard drive and wiped the laptop, which shows a pretty strong intent to deceive.
Sure, when it's summarized like that, it sounds bad, and it maybe bad. But compare that to this slightly expanded timeline summary from reading the actual filing[1]: The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost…
All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
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You don't think Google's out for blood? Didn't they announce a Waymo partnership with Lyft a couple of weeks ago?
I agree. Google doesn't want a license agreement. As pointed out below, yes, there is investment, but I think Google/Alphabet is out for blood and the investment dollars will be recouped in the civil settlement if not the arbitration with Levandowski. Either way, I don't think Google cares. They want to be first on the market. And based on how badly Uber has been flouting the law, I suspect Google gets there first no…
Well, for the moment, the record is exactly the opposite of that prediction.
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Depending on how much he currently has wealth-wise, his reputation and credibility here might be worth much more than that in the long run. He's still a bright engineer who could go on to do things in the self-driving car space. His expertise and exposure to the most cutting-edge IP is worth quite a bit. The less damage he gets out of this legally and the less dirt thrown on his name the more he will be able to turn…
If he is looking to protect his reputation, AND he is actually innocent , even at the expense of the money he should be wanting to tell his side of the story despite a lawyer telling him not to talk. My, admittedly cynical, take is much simpler, his lawyer sat him down and said something along the lines of: "screw the 250 million, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay out of prison".
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Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?
Taking the fifth is not automatically a sign of guilt despite what some people might think. As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.
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Sure, when it's summarized like that, it sounds bad, and it maybe bad. But compare that to this slightly expanded timeline summary from reading the actual filing[1]: The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost…
Sure, Google's interpretation is not particularly generous. But even the most charitable reading of the facts would find that Levandowski downloaded the files to an external disk, relatively close to when he left the company. All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
Actually, no. All they have is that a few days after an SVN sync, a USB card reader was attached for 8 hours. There is no evidence presented that he actually copied any files, much less the synced SVN files, to whatever was connected with the USB card reader. He could have plugged it in to copy his personal SSH keys to the machine and left it in until he left for the day for all we know.
There is separate information that he exported a single Google Drive file to a personal device on January 11, titled "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015". There are further logs about other high level engineers that subsequently left that also exported Google Drive files to personal devices prior to leaving as well.
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If he is looking to protect his reputation, AND he is actually innocent , even at the expense of the money he should be wanting to tell his side of the story despite a lawyer telling him not to talk. My, admittedly cynical, take is much simpler, his lawyer sat him down and said something along the lines of: "screw the 250 million, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay out of prison".
He should want to, perhaps, but being innocent does not inherently make saying anything a good legal idea given a potential future criminal case.
For what Levandowski is accused of and how he is accused of doing it, there should be plenty of either incriminating or exculpatory evidence, if the parties involved want to divulge it. Google isn't some district attorney trying to look tough on crime for the voters, nobody outside of Google and Uber really care all that much about the case really care or which way it goes. Levandowski, by pleading the 5th has already been found guilty in the court of public opinion (yes, yes, shame on all of us) so he can't be clinging to whatever shreds of his reputation are left for future jobs.
It's not impossible that he is innocent and his lawyer thinks the best strategy is to plead the 5th anyway, I just don't happen to buy it myself.