I served jury duty, and the reverse happened. The plaintiffs sued a social worker, but the case revolved around things the Department of Human Services (where he worked) advised him to do, as well as things other members of the organization did independently of him.
In that case, I found it easier to decide when the question was "is this one guy responsible for everything that happened?" rather than the more complicated "is DHS as a whole responsible?"
> So what if it turns out that Uber is totally innocent?
I honestly can't see this as an outcome; either Uber's wrong in they completely and miserably failed due dilligence, or they're wrong in that they actively coerced [him] to create a shell company with Google assets so it could "launder" them into Uber.
We can't say for certain which it is at this point. All we know is that Uber's trying their level best not to say which by refusing discovery and worming around the issue. That alone signals to me that the preponderance of evidence bar is going to be a fairly easy one for Google to clear here. There's just too many dots that even when left unconnected draw a pretty clear picture of what happened.
What does it take to get a business license revoked these days? If an individual carried on the way Uber does s/he's be looking at a long stretch in prison. While I championed Uber's disruption of the taxi monopoly when it got started, and did a lot of free advocacy here on HN against taxi industry shills, the firm has turned out to be as corrupt or worse than the market it set out to disrupt.
Should the various allegations made against the firm prove true, and and it seems like there's a good chance of that, a good number of people need to face criminal charges, the company needs to be shut down and its assets auctioned off, and the investors need to end up with nothing because they abrogated their corporate governance responsibilities.
From day one the only reason Uber was "disrupting" the taxi industry is because they blatantly ignored regulation. It should be expected for them to be equally shady in other areas if their entire business was based on breaking the law, whether you think those laws are warranted or not.
I'm totally open to punishing the execs and investors, but shutting down the company hurts the employees, drivers, and users more, so not a great outcome. A financial judgement/penalty against Uber large enough to force it into a bankruptcy and sale, force execs out, force a loss on investors, but keep it operating seems better then a shutdown.
Uber seems to be the logical extreme of 'easier to beg forgiveness' mentality; there are no rules (explicit or implicit) or ethical boundaries that are not subject to be broken in pursuit of their goals.
Based on this live tweets (https://twitter.com/CSaid) it doesn't sound like Waymo/Google is making much headway. They want to pin this on Uber, but haven't presented evidence of wrongdoing by Uber:
Judge to Waymo: U have no proof that shows a chain
of Levandowski saying to anybody here’s the
trade secrets.
Unless Waymo presents something like this, I don't see how this trial benefits them. Sure they can make a big fuss an get Levandowski kicked off self driving cars / Lidars, but that won't stop Uber from moving forward with their program.
It casts doubt/worry/issues on the legal legitimacy of Uber's tech. Employees/Researchers won't want to become embroiled in this, if they ever want to license the tech I'm sure "what about google?" will come up and need to be mitigated.
It gets Alphabet and the newly founded Waymo a lot of "free" publicity, helping to form their public image as a car company. (Wronged by the evil uber)
Maybe a little vindictive, but I'm sure their lawyers would rather his compensation burn than be used against them.
Judges asking questions like this don't give previews of their thinking necessarily. Often it's because they want a lawyer to make a particular argument in open court, so that they can take that argument into consideration. They are asking questions to attempt to get all arguments stated precisely.
Levandowski is probably going to come out of this really well. Uber, not so much. Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete spinning-scanner gear, mostly from Velodyne. It's something you'd use on an experimental vehicle, not a production one. The production LIDAR systems are coming, they're all solid state, and they come from big auto parts makers like Delphi and Continental. So by the time the Uber case gets to trial, it will be moot.
Levandowski already got his money. Waymo could sue him, but what are the damages? Google isn't selling anything, so they can't show impact on their sales volume. (Neither is Uber. Uber's venture into self-driving is probably more to pump up the valuation than to provide a real service, anyway.)
I'm beginning to think that self-driving will be a feature that comes from auto parts companies. You need sensors and actuators, which come from auto parts companies. You need dashboard units, which come from auto parts companies. You need a compute unit, which is just a ruggedized computer packaged for automotive conditions, something that comes from auto parts companies. You need software, which may come from a number of sources. This may not be all that disruptive a technology.
> Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete spinning-scanner gear, mostly from Velodyne. It's something you'd use on an experimental vehicle, not a production one.
Given that (1) Google is spending a whole lot of money to protect their LIDAR technology in court, (2) Uber spent nearly half a billion dollars apparently to copy it and (3) Google (with their proprietary LIDAR) is the only company -- publicity and press releases aside -- that seems to be actively operating an autonomous fleet in the wild with reasonably few overrides, disengagements or accidents, I'm willing to bet that good LIDAR is actually more important than you're giving it credit for here.
>Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete spinning-scanner gear, mostly from Velodyne. It's something you'd use on an experimental vehicle, not a production one. The production LIDAR systems are coming, they're all solid state, and they come from big auto parts makers like Delphi and Continental. So by the time the Uber case gets to trial, it will be moot.
Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete? Didn't Google just come up with a new system that reduces the cost of a LIDAR system by 90% ?
Everything you described in the last paragraph is a commodity market other than software. The margins will be in software or the overall car brands themselves (since vehicle manufacturers are large enough to throw their weight into lowering software margins assuming there's more than one option e.g. not like Microsoft in the 90s).
Levandowski has been invoking the Fifth Amendment in this case, which is a case that he's not even a party to. That's either legal gamesmanship, or else he has a genuine fear of prison time out of this. (Alternately, it might be possible that he could lose a big chunk of money but avoid prison.)
If he comes out of this still holding a big chunk of money, but having to spend several years in prison, is that still "coming out of this really well"? In my view, no.
The disruption is mostly social. We will need less parking spaces, driver's licenses will become increasingly unneeded, and car ownership will largely become something for hobbyists. Transportation will become even more a subscription, with the only exceptions air and sea travel.
Waymo's endgame here is intellectual property licensing. They're not trying to be in the business of manufacturing sensors and actuators. They're trying to be in the business of licensing software that makes a working self-driving system out of a car equipped with sensors and actuators.
It's interesting that all the self driving software seems to be advancing at a similar rate - Google's, Volvo's, Tesla's and Mercedes seem to have some what similar performance, which I guess is because most AI research is published and people use similar techniques. At that rate there won't be one system dominating but a bunch of comparable ones probably including third party suppliers that any auto manufacturer can bolt on.
This is Ubers fault for leaving themselves open, but this will play out like a hostile takeover w/ Google upping their 6percent stake to controlling or wholly owning Uber
I assume the biggest motivation for Google is not hurting or controlling Uber but preventing this kind of thing from happening again.
I assume there are a lot of people working for Google who are experts in the tech they helped create but no longer owners of that tech. By that token, Google would really try hard to keep this sort of person from leaving with their tech.
[+] [-] golfer|9 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/CSaid
https://twitter.com/Priyasideas
https://twitter.com/inafried
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac
[+] [-] korzun|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|9 years ago|reply
Well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205
Top comment noted how the company looked like a “quick flip”.
[+] [-] bonzini|9 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20150709120858/http://ot.to/
I think this is the place:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3678268,-73.7132536,3a,75y,1...
:)
[+] [-] bobbles|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crench|9 years ago|reply
This is going to be a very interesting case.
[+] [-] jtraffic|9 years ago|reply
In that case, I found it easier to decide when the question was "is this one guy responsible for everything that happened?" rather than the more complicated "is DHS as a whole responsible?"
[+] [-] awalton|9 years ago|reply
I honestly can't see this as an outcome; either Uber's wrong in they completely and miserably failed due dilligence, or they're wrong in that they actively coerced [him] to create a shell company with Google assets so it could "launder" them into Uber.
We can't say for certain which it is at this point. All we know is that Uber's trying their level best not to say which by refusing discovery and worming around the issue. That alone signals to me that the preponderance of evidence bar is going to be a fairly easy one for Google to clear here. There's just too many dots that even when left unconnected draw a pretty clear picture of what happened.
[+] [-] appetizer|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] FireBeyond|9 years ago|reply
"Tough shit for Uber. Shrug."
[+] [-] anigbrowl|9 years ago|reply
Should the various allegations made against the firm prove true, and and it seems like there's a good chance of that, a good number of people need to face criminal charges, the company needs to be shut down and its assets auctioned off, and the investors need to end up with nothing because they abrogated their corporate governance responsibilities.
[+] [-] cmahler7|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2048|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askvictor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terribledactyl|9 years ago|reply
It casts doubt/worry/issues on the legal legitimacy of Uber's tech. Employees/Researchers won't want to become embroiled in this, if they ever want to license the tech I'm sure "what about google?" will come up and need to be mitigated.
It gets Alphabet and the newly founded Waymo a lot of "free" publicity, helping to form their public image as a car company. (Wronged by the evil uber)
Maybe a little vindictive, but I'm sure their lawyers would rather his compensation burn than be used against them.
[+] [-] stvswn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
Levandowski already got his money. Waymo could sue him, but what are the damages? Google isn't selling anything, so they can't show impact on their sales volume. (Neither is Uber. Uber's venture into self-driving is probably more to pump up the valuation than to provide a real service, anyway.)
I'm beginning to think that self-driving will be a feature that comes from auto parts companies. You need sensors and actuators, which come from auto parts companies. You need dashboard units, which come from auto parts companies. You need a compute unit, which is just a ruggedized computer packaged for automotive conditions, something that comes from auto parts companies. You need software, which may come from a number of sources. This may not be all that disruptive a technology.
[+] [-] kcorbitt|9 years ago|reply
Given that (1) Google is spending a whole lot of money to protect their LIDAR technology in court, (2) Uber spent nearly half a billion dollars apparently to copy it and (3) Google (with their proprietary LIDAR) is the only company -- publicity and press releases aside -- that seems to be actively operating an autonomous fleet in the wild with reasonably few overrides, disengagements or accidents, I'm willing to bet that good LIDAR is actually more important than you're giving it credit for here.
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|9 years ago|reply
Google's LIDAR technology is obsolete? Didn't Google just come up with a new system that reduces the cost of a LIDAR system by 90% ?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-08/alphabet-...
[+] [-] sf_rob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|9 years ago|reply
If he comes out of this still holding a big chunk of money, but having to spend several years in prison, is that still "coming out of this really well"? In my view, no.
[+] [-] wolf550e|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorvi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaphorm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmelbye|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahyarm|9 years ago|reply
Did he get straight cash, illiquid uber stock or did he get a big contract with a lot of performance stipulations in it?
[+] [-] dmitrygr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristianc|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205
[+] [-] Namrog84|9 years ago|reply
Anyone have any speculation as to what might happen to Uber if this turns out to be true?
[+] [-] wand3r|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|9 years ago|reply
I assume there are a lot of people working for Google who are experts in the tech they helped create but no longer owners of that tech. By that token, Google would really try hard to keep this sort of person from leaving with their tech.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Touche|9 years ago|reply
That is their core competency, in fact.
[+] [-] valuearb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|9 years ago|reply
They don't seem to be backing that clickbait title do they?
I think the backdated form makes sense, more sense they doing something obvious like creating a fake company the 'day' after someone leaves Google.
[+] [-] fujipadam|9 years ago|reply
If it is proved, there should be actual consequence to the executives, including jail
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huangc10|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asafira|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunderbunder|9 years ago|reply
I believe no further comment is necessary.