Emails show Kalanick's suspicions about Google's self-driving cars

http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-uber-wanted-to-partner-with-google-on-self-driving-cars-2017-7

by malandrew • 9 years ago

13 19 9 years ago

vivekd3• 9 years ago

Kalanick was absolutely right to be panicking about self driving cars. The reason we pay a little more for taxis and ubers is that we have to pay for the person driving the cars. With a self driving taxi service, and no need to pay for a driver, the cost of hiring a ride would become much cheaper disrupting uber's business.

* This post was Edited in reply to comment with an edit deleting criticism about intellectual property

factsplease2• 9 years ago

Could you please keep your statements truthful. There is no proof that Kalanick or Uber stole anything from Waymo. There is an ongoing and unresolved court case to determine that. It's only appropriate to make such a statement, if it's proven that Uber stole anything. This is HN not reddit.

Thus far, all we know is that Levandowsky alledgedly took files as leverage to make sure Google paid him the bonuses Google was late on, but he was expressively forbidden by Kalanick from bringing any of those files to Uber. All the discovery performed so far has turned up zero evidence that any files from Waymo ended up at Uber.

It's not uncommon for legacy companies to sue newer, more nimble and more promising companies over IP issues when they lose star performers. It also happened to Google when Paypal sued them for trade secret theft when promising senior talent left Paypal to join Google Wallet:

https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-google/

It's perfectly okay to recruit promising talent from other companies with better offers so long as the recruiting company keeps everything kosher via due diligence that ensures the talent does not bring intellectual property from the previous employer to the new company. All evidence made public thus far suggests the Uber did its due diligence here and made sure nothing belonging to Waymo made its way to Uber.

vivekd3• 9 years ago

That's a fair point, I edited my comment to get rid of the part about intellectual property violations in response to your comment.

ultimateedition• 9 years ago

Are you a bot? The comment you replied to made no mention of Waymo or stealing.

jtmcmc• 9 years ago

sure sure Uber sock puppet...

xsmasher• 9 years ago

I thought the file theft by Levandowsky was first uncovered when a supplier was found to be working on an Uber circuitboard that was copied from a Waymo circuitboard. Not so?

xiaoma• 9 years ago

How unusual is it for venture units like this to collect data from the companies they've invested in and then scale up competitors to the successful ones?

Aron2• 9 years ago

Travis also tried to partner with Tesla on this by using Tesla as a source for the vehicles (not sure who was responsible in this case for the software -- prolly uber), and Musk declined. Soon thereafter, Musk published his grand plan part 2 for Tesla, which included a home grown ride-sharing network where in grand Musk style they are going to do everything themselves.

toomuchtodo4• 9 years ago

If you have the vehicles, why partner with someone who just wrote a platform you can replicate yourself? Uber has no value to those doing the actual self-driving work. They are the MBA in your startup to the CTO building the actual product.

SilasX• 9 years ago

That's like saying, if you make cars, why let Avis take the profits from renting them out? In both cases, because that car related business (rentals or ride hailing apps) is outside your core specialty.

Aron2• 9 years ago

I'm a fan and investor in Tesla, but there's 3 parts to winning the ridesharing, autonomous, BEV future and the most important part is the role that Uber has right now which is the customer-ridesharing-relationship. The platform technology is going to largely escalate in multiple places simultaneously and thus be the commodity bit. It is definitely an advantage to Tesla if they manage to get the hardware\software right via Tesla Network with a 2-3 year headstart, but the capital required to expand is so high that this head-start is less substantial than say a Facebook style adoption curve. It'll be a battle. We'll see.

Emails show Kalanick's suspicions about Google's self-driving cars

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