
Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets - coloneltcb
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-23/alphabet-s-waymo-sues-uber-for-stealing-self-driving-patents?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
======
chollida1
From another source to provide some colour:

> According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo
> accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and
> now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential
> documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the
> documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and
> LIDAR technology, Waymo says

> The lawsuit claims that a team of ex-Google engineers used critical
> technology, including the Lidar laser sensors, in the autonomous trucking
> startup they founded, and which Uber later acquired

I was confused as to what stealing a patent actually meant:)

Waymo has also posted this....

[https://medium.com/@waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-
otto...](https://medium.com/@waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and-
uber-86f4f98902a1#.mn83yyh0t)

From this post...

> Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing
> in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of
> machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board —
> except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR
> design.

> We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony
> Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary
> design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of
> Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server,
> Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his
> company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly
> confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and
> testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop.
> Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase
> forensic fingerprints.

Ooops, that does sound bad after a first read.

~~~
tajen
How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all
their company laptops?

~~~
startupdiscuss
This was the noteworthy part for me as well.

They had to know that he:

1\. modified the software on his laptop

2\. logged into an area he should not have had access to (this is probably
standard)

3\. attached an external drive (possible, but standard?)

4\. and they got all this info _after_ he deleted the drive, which means they
either went in and found remaining data on the drive or else they captured the
info in real time.

I suppose if the drive is clean now, and they know he downloaded data, they
can infer that he wiped it.

I suppose that if they know he accessed it, and there was software on his
computer preventing him from doing so, they can infer that he downloaded
something to overcome it.

But knowing that he connected to an external drive implies active monitoring.
That's the part I am most curious about.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is all information a rudimentary desktop auditing tool can gather and
store on a server. Most collect both hardware (which would include connected
devices) and software inventory. Anyone SHOULD be auditing company PCs on a
relatively regular basis. It wouldn't surprise me if Google was auditing much
more frequently than the average and could catch something like this in the
act.

~~~
086421357909764
Yup, lots of firms using HIDS that gather all sorts of system data. OSSEC is
what I've seen rather frequently for this.

------
w00tw00tw00t
I had an interview there where the manager asked me to leave my laptop behind
and go for a walk. I was hesitant after hearing stories of Uber conducting
electronic espionage against its competitors. They could easily bypass Macbook
security with a USB device (I had heard of that on HN too) so I was very
nervous to leave my laptop behind and noted its exact orientation and position
on the table. Sure enough when I returned my laptop had changed both position
and orientation, but only enough to tell if you had specifically memorized it.
I could be paranoid. They could have simply moved things on the desk. But
anyway, people who are paranoid like me are advised not to take their laptops
into Uber interviews. They are capable of just about anything, or so thinks my
now paranoid self.

~~~
rajathagasthya
> They could easily bypass Macbook security with a USB device

Isn't this only possible if the laptop is unlocked?

~~~
andreyf
It's not possible unless you have zero-days against the USB drivers or
firmware on your laptop, in which case being logged in or not doesn't really
matter.

~~~
w00tw00tw00t
Proof I'm paranoid. My greater point, however, is that they have done some
really shady stuff, and stealing competitor's IP is part of their culture, so
their behavior itself promotes and justifies paranoia on my part and on the
part of anyone looking to work for or do business with Uber.

Reputation is everything.

~~~
maverick_iceman
It's pretty stupid to get paranoid over this. As GP pointed out if you logged
out then it's very unlikely that they will get access.

~~~
w00tw00tw00t
I think it's pretty stupid to consider any consumer device to be secure
enough. I did hear on HN some time before that interview that some USB device
can be used to bypass the lock screen, which was the basis for my worrying.
Now, some are saying in this thread that it is possible (or at least was at
the time) while others saying that it is not (and was not) -- Even an educated
sample of tech folks cannot make up their mind, so there is (or at least was)
room for justified concern... no?

~~~
andreyf
I think the consensus is that it's possible, but expensive. So like, nation-
state espionage yes, corporate espionage no. But anyone who actually knows
anything won't be talking about it on HN ;)

------
dantiberian
A really critical thing that hasn't got much attention is that shortly before
leaving Waymo, Levandowski had a meeting with senior Uber execs(!). The day
after the meeting, he formed 280 Systems which became Otto.

The implication in the filing is that Uber planned this with Levandowski, and
he only created Otto as a plausible corporate vehicle for developing the LiDAR
technology before Uber acquired them. Given what we know about Uber and the
assertions in the complaint, this sounds entirely plausible, maybe even
likely.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)

~~~
fullshark
Paragraph 48 if anyone is wondering.

------
Fricken
In related news, Tesla is accusing ex-autopilot director Sterling Anderson of
stealing code from Tesla before starting up Aurora with Chris Urmson (the
former CTO of Alphabet's self driving car program):

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-
di...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-director-for-
taking-proprietary-info-poaching-employees/)

------
glibgil
> searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued
> laptop

That could mean he downloaded an SFTP client like Cyberduck. He could have
searched the internet for a client and then installed it. It doesn't say he
did not have auth.

Imagine a Google security engineer being deposed for this lawsuit.

Lawyer: "Show me on the MacBook how he downloaded the files"

Engineer: "Well, he used Cyberduck"

Lawyer: "Is that part of the Mac?"

Engineer: "No, he'd have to download it separately"

Lawyer: "So, he searched for and installed specialized software onto his
company-issued laptop?"

Engineer: "Um, sure"

Lawyer: "Thank you, that's all the questions I had"

~~~
msbarnett
> That could mean he downloaded an SFTP client like Cyberduck. He could have
> searched the internet for a client and then installed it. It doesn't say he
> did not have auth.

They weren't trying to claim he hacked in. They're making the case he went out
of his way to get his hands on these documents, and building a timeline that
suggests _why_ he went to that trouble.

------
twinkletwinkle
Interesting. I vividly remember a commenter here on a thread about Uber's
acquisition of Otto. The user said based on the timeline and filings, it
seemed like Otto hadn't really accomplished anything yet, and was probably
founded purely to be acquired by Uber. I wonder if there's even more here...

------
golfer
Does anyone else remember this New Yorker profile [1] of Anthony Levandowski
and self driving cars? Way back from 2013, when this tech was still novel.
Google let Levandowski run the show for this piece -- his name is mentioned 57
times in the article. Goes to show how important and trusted he was in
Google's universe.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-
correct](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-correct)

~~~
Animats
Sure. I met him when he was still a student at UC Berkeley. He was the one who
built the self-driving, self-balancing motorcycle for the 2005 DARPA Grand
Challenge. It didn't navigate that well or get all that far, but it was really
cool.

------
fasteddie
Maybe I have a selective memory as a former Zynga employee, but generally
these "stolen documents" lawsuits in high profile tech companies have
generally turned out to be pretty factual. Easy to prove, and hard to fake.

~~~
icelancer
And lawsuits like this generally don't get filed unless it's near slam-dunk
considering the burden of proof is high on stolen electronic documents.

~~~
Kostchei
Considering even with logging off: journaling file systems, "user assist",
device connection logs, pre-fetch (or your OS's equivalent)- these are all
huge tranches of data if you are looking at a system shortly after an event.
Ask me 6 months later- probably not. Give me a system that hasn't even
rebooted, has a heap of ram and hasn't been used much since- 6 weeks is fine,
not ideal, but doable.

~~~
valleyer
Journaling filesystems don't "journal" all the activity in perpetuity. They
typically just journal the changes until they're committed to disk, usually
for less than a second.

See [http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-
design.pdf](http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf),
section 7.2 "How Does Journaling Work?".

------
jplayer01
I always was incredibly surprised at how quickly Uber had working self-driving
cars (with the required, highly specialized hardware). Guess this explains it.

~~~
tyingq
Uber acquired Otto around 08/2016\. I don't think this explains it.

~~~
amaks
Who knows maybe they had somebody else from the Google self driving car
project to steal self-driving car secrets earlier. Based on what this
Levandowski guy did the industrial espionage may go unnoticed. I'm wondering
if Waymo will require Uber to reveal schematics of their self-driving car
project as part of the law suite.

~~~
tyingq
I have doubts what was stolen was actually any of the secret sauce. An
interface board for a lidar unit is probably one of the most simple things on
the list.

The actual self driving software, and more importantly, all of the collected
data from the waymo fleet would have been the key.

~~~
makomk
Not so much an interface board as a whole new tested design for a LIDAR unit,
including a unique patented optics setup and laser driver circuit, according
to the complaint. Also testing, manufacturing, and characterization procedures
and results and information on suppliers for the parts required. The PCB was
just the component whose accidental disclosure lead them to conclude that Uber
and Otto were using the stolen design. Since the PCB apparently dictates the
position and orientation of the laser diodes and sensors, presumably it would
only be useful if they copied the whole thing.

~~~
tyingq
Interesting. Is the specific Lidar unit really that big a differentiator? I
understand they aren't cheap or simple, but it seems odd that each self
driving car company would want to design their own. I would guess you would
rather have some healthy ecosystem of suppliers...Velodyne, etc.

~~~
bsder
> it seems odd that each self driving car company would want to design their
> own

They don't _want_ to do this, so, if they do, it's because they _had_ to do
this.

Practically all of the current sensor suites are expensive, bulky, and power
hungry. If you want them on lots of cars, you need to reduce all 3 of those
characteristics dramatically.

------
sriram_sun
What kind of employee would download 14K files to a personal drive right
before quitting? It is trivially easy to watch what files get copied over to
external drives.

I think you can follow the money trail here and find some answers for sure.
Now if Uber/Otto has a clause that prohibits employees from bringing in
confidential data from previous companies, how can they be held liable? Does
Google have to prove that those stolen documents were actually used in Uber
designs?

~~~
dba7dba
A supplier of Google received the file from Uber and that supplier forwarded
it to Google. This means the file was sent out by Uber to a supplier to try to
get parts made. I think that's proof enough.

Btw that's 1 very sharp eyed engineer, whoever that is...

~~~
MertsA
>Btw that's 1 very sharp eyed engineer, whoever that is...

It sounds like this was entirely accidental on the supplier's part.

------
jpeg_hero
Lots of Juice here.

Complaint:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)

>Waymo was recently – and apparently inadvertently – copied on an email from
one of its LiDAR component vendors.

Is this going to be a legal test of that annoying lawyer email footer
language?

>This message contains information from xxxxxx that may be confidential and
privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, please refrain from any
disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of this information and note that
such actions are prohibited. If you have received this information in error,
please notify the sender immediately by telephone or by replying to this
transmission.

Ha! More legalese BS that never holds up.

> Otto launched publicly in May 2016, and was quickly acquired by Uber in
> August 2016 for $680 million.

The fact pattern here is going to be absolutely brutal for Uber. A non-
technical judge is going to see the allegation: ex-google employee downloads
technical documents in December 2015, launches a company 5 months later in May
2016, and is bought for $680M (later speculated to be $1B+) for all its
technical accomplishments. How much fundamental research did they do in the 3
months between May-16 and August-16?!?!? Or was it just to buy the stolen IP
that google had developed over 7 years?!? Brutal for Uber!

\--

A public company recently settled a similar lawsuit (competitor hires exec,
exec is proven to have downloaded documents) for $130M on much smaller
numbers. And the defendant was run through the legal wringer first.

[http://www.geekwire.com/2016/zillow-realtor-com-operator-
mov...](http://www.geekwire.com/2016/zillow-realtor-com-operator-move-move-
reach/)

Expect Uber spankage, bigly.

> shortly after Mr. Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar
> payment from Google

Funny because of all the recent press that Google paid autonomous driving
talent too much that they left!

>Infringement of Patent No. 9,368,936 (Against All Defendants)

Real nasty. If a trade secrets lawsuit is an arrow, throwing in a patent
infringement claim too, is poison tipped and barbed!

This is some good "old skool Google" where they used to show broad competence
across many domains; in this case legal.

------
Fricken
Presumably you're in Arizona at the moment, Mr. Levandowski, it's close to the
border, run for it!

We'll take a moment to remember the salad days, when you were just a crazy
college kid who showed up at the Darpa Grand Challenge with a self driving
motorcycle:

[https://youtu.be/XOgkNh_IPjU](https://youtu.be/XOgkNh_IPjU)

------
bitL
This is going to be interesting to watch. Alphabet just:

\- went nuclear on Uber/Otto

\- revealed what they track internally to all their employees

~~~
GooglyMoogly
When your company stores very private info on billions of people, and is
actively attacked (sometimes successfully) by the top intelligence agencies of
the world[1][2], you have to be extremely careful, and monitor everything.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)

[2] [https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-
companies-s...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-companies-
slap-back-at-the-n-s-a-s-smiley-face)

~~~
thr0waway1239
Some people might see an irony in your comment.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in 2009 "...banks that are too big to fail are
too big to exist..."

My theory is that the too big to exist theory is now true for basically all
the tech giants. Generally, everyone who knows the kind of tracking these
companies do (internal and external) agree this is true, except those who
benefit from the companies' continued existence e.g. employees, investors,
shareholders.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
You conveniently forgot consumers.

~~~
thr0waway1239
On the other hand, imagine if the data collection never stops and one of the
big companies gets hacked, or faces a serious competitive threat making it
more likely to sell its data, starts going out of business, or needs to
cooperate by sharing its data in return for government favors, or needs to
share data to get access to foreign markets etc. I have a feeling this
venerable "consumer" is going to learn a painful lesson one of these days.

------
the_watcher
Minor fix: Waymo is suing for stealing secrets, not patents. As far as I know,
it's not actually possible to steal a patent.

~~~
lindowe
Infringement of patents (the ’273 patent, entitled “Microrod Compression of
Laser Beam in Combination with Transmit Lens")

~~~
ssambros
Infringement, yes, but how can you 'steal' a patent?

~~~
the_watcher
That was exactly my point. Patents are definitionally impossible to steal
(unless, I guess, you somehow are able to get access to the patent database
and change the patent holder?)

------
tlrobinson
Well, that would help explain how Otto went from nothing to $680 million
acquisition in ~7 months.

------
danjoc
There's something very wrong in the world when the people who invent things
aren't the main beneficiary of their own inventions.

Edit: A guy downloads 9.7GB of other people's work, walks off with it, and
sells it. Flushing years of work from hundreds of engineers down the toilet.
You down voters really support that? Amazing.

~~~
untilHellbanned
Otto was a YC company so there's your answer. People condone a lot of awful if
they 1) make money off it; 2) Have some emotional connection to it

~~~
changdizzle
As far as I know Otto wasn't YC - are you sure you're not thinking of Cruise
(which was acquired by GM)?

~~~
CardenB
He could be thinking of starsky robotics

------
Animats
Google might have been better off with patents than trade secrets. There are
financial penalties for theft of trade secrets, but once the secret is out, no
injunctions. The one who stole it can use it. With patents, injunctions are
available, although hard to get.

Anyway, several companies are developing automotive LIDAR units which are
better than Google's rotating things. Quantergy and Velodyne claim to be close
to low-cost solid state LIDARs, and ASC has good ones now at a high price
point. (An ASC unit just docked the Dragon spacecraft with the ISS.) By the
time this gets to court, Google's secret technology will be obsolete.

The question is whether Uber will defend Levandowski or leave him to twist
slowly, slowly in the wind and go to jail.

~~~
revelation
I doubt there is any hot technology in some LIDAR interface board in the first
place.

~~~
Animats
There's a lot to be done at the semiconductor level for solid state LIDAR. The
ASC units work great, but the sensor requires an InGaAs fab, like night vision
sensors, to get good light sensitivity and thus range. Others are talking
about getting good performance with a sensor that can be made in a CMOS fab,
but nobody is shipping yet. This is an area where Waymo has a strong interest,
even if they're not making the sensors themselves.

------
guelo
Wow this has got to be the worse single month for a company that I've ever
seen.

~~~
_audakel
Or Microsoft antitrust?

~~~
edblarney
Please - Microsoft antitrust was nothing like this.

Microsoft was basically extremely successful - and then became a monopoly
provider. In general, I wouldn't call this an 'immoral act' or whatever.

Also - I'd suggest that Google is just as much a Monopoly provider as MS ever
was, they could face the same type of case in EU soon.

Stealing IP, lying, corruption - this is in a whole different league from
being so successful that you become a monopoly.

------
croddin
It looks like bloomberg updated the title to: "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber
Stole Self-Driving Secrets", which makes more sense. We should change the
title here.

------
praneshp
Could a mod change the title to "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-
Driving Secrets", which is what the Bloomberg article says (for now)?

~~~
grzm
To expedite this, you may want to email the mods directly via the Contact link
in the footer.

------
aramadia
Direct link to the complaint:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)

------
donjh
And Google Ventures is an Uber investor... so Google is effectively suing one
of their own portfolio companies.

~~~
twblalock
Companies sue other companies they have relationships with fairly often.

For example, Samsung is still a hardware supplier to Apple, so Apple is suing
its own supplier in the Apple v. Samsung case.

~~~
dba7dba
And not to mention other Samsung subsidiaries (that make display, RAM, CPU)
were probably crying bloody murder to Samsung Handphone division...

------
home_boi
Despite the damning alleged evidence, I get the feeling that all the offenders
knew that they would be found out ahead of time, evaluated the risk reward
trade-off and decided that they could somehow get away with it.

Are there any lawyers here who could make an educated guess how they could?

~~~
bmon
Well a good start would be using a different supplier than Waymo.

------
jfoster
> Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing
> in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of
> machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board —
> except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR
> design.

Doesn't sound plausible. At a minimum, this would have to be the "dumbed down"
version of how they uncovered this.

------
selftemp
Copy-pasting from my comment on Reddit.

The first thing that caught my attention after reading the whole lawsuit!
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)
[Item 42- 49] itself is some of the timings regarding Otto's inception and
Uber's acquisition.

Timeline:

* Levandowski first registered the domain for his then(now Otto) company on Nov'15

* The suit says on 3rd of Dec'15 he searched for the LIDAR docs and on 11th of Dec'15, he downloaded 14,000 docs from Google's servers.

* Google alleges that on Jan'16, Levandowski told his colleagues that he plans to replicate the Waymo tech at one of Waymo's competitor.

* One of the damning allegation from Waymo is that he met with top execs at Uber at their HQ in SF on Jan 14th 2016.

* Just a day later on 15th he officially formed one of his company(280 Systems, now part of Otto), later on Feb 1st he also registered his other company(Otto Trucking) Feb 1st.

* Strangely after working at Google for about 7 years, he quit Google without a notice(from suit) on Jan 27th.

This is from the interview Bloomberg's did after Uber acquired Otto: 'Kalanick
began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an
acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood
where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would
leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or
competitors. They’d grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city’s Ferry
Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company’s
trucks to market faster.'

From the above details, it can imply any of these three things might have
happened,

* Scenario 1: He or Uber didn't do anything different from the official story so far.

* Scenario 2: Levandowski went to Uber saying he has custom LIDAR tech but ended up starting his own company the next day and 8 months later Uber just bought them for $680M for the team and tech he alleged stole from Waymo.

* Scenario 3: Levandowski went to Uber in Jan'16, said he has the tech for custom LIDAR, Uber wants it, but there is non-suspicious way for taking the tech directly to Uber since Levandowski alone can't build it. Instead Uber suggests to spin off his own company, hire a team (mostly from Waymo), put together a demo in Nevada desert. This brings in all the press and validity that Otto has the self-driving tech and team. So at this point Otto and Levandowski is a Self-driving tech startup not a LIDAR startup. Now Uber can come in, acquire this hot startup and team, in a market that's worth Trillions. Now Uber is suddenly in the trucking business, gets a huge PR and valuation bump. In this process they also get the LIDAR tech that's build in just 9 months.

What it means is that if the 3rd theory is true, Uber was always buying the
LIDAR tech from Levandowski even before he left Waymo. Otto and other
components are just a proxy so that it gives them a great story without any
suspicions.

To put things into perspective, a single Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR that almost
all self-driving companies use costs around $75,000. Waymo says their
equivalent custom alternative costs less than 10% (<$7000). This is a huge
cost saving for a tech that is going to go in 100,000+ cars Uber hopes to have
in the market in the future. So yea, this can be a bullshit Lawsuit (based on
the evidence, less likely) or a well executed corporate espionage!

~~~
ma2rten
It could also be that Levandowski met with Uber execs as the lawsuit claims,
but didn't tell them he had stolen the documents.

~~~
webXL
That could very well be true. _wink_ _wink_

"I know it's hard to believe, Travis, but while I worked for a company doing
the exact the same thing as this company, at nights, I _singlehandedly_
created this trove of patentable technology that will revolutionize the
automobile industry, which _coincidently_ , _really_ , my former employer is
spending billions to do. You have to trust me."

~~~
ma2rten
If I had stolen a bunch of trade secrets I wouldn't tell my company's
competitor.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr.drink)

------
dnautics
Is the HN headline correct? The bloomberg article says "trade secrets" which
are very different from patents, the video also says that this is not
primarily a patent case.

edit: 0:48 in the video

------
monktastic1
His favorite quote: "I drink your milkshake."

Wish I were kidding.

------
sebleon
Seems like Google/Waymo has known about this for a while, funny how they timed
this lawsuit announcement during the Fowler blog post uproar

~~~
equalarrow
Yup, timing is everything. For press.. I doubt tho, this will affect the
lawsuit.

------
amaks
Things couldn't be worse for Uber these days. Sexual harassment scandal, Didi
Chuxing plans for global expansion, now this lawsuit.

------
giis
Interesting questions for google employees:

Does Google force you to use specific version of OS?

Do they have pre-installed software?

Is it not-okay to format and install any OS you want?

I work in startups, they provide only laptops and doesnt care about OS or
software. There is no mandatory software requirement from company side.

~~~
QuercusMax
For eng workstations, virtually all are Goobuntu unless you have a reallllly
good reason (e.g. CAD software for mech e's, or work on Windows Chrome).

For laptops, they're essentially just used as a dumb web terminal + ssh. You
can get mac, goobuntu, or maybe even Windows. Since you aren't allowed to have
source code on laptops (except certain special exceptions), it's not as big of
a concern.

~~~
valleyer
You aren't allowed to have source on your laptop? How do you edit it? Through
some web editor? Serious question!

~~~
UncleMeat
SSH or a web editor.

~~~
valleyer
That sounds awful! Is that just a "laptop" rule (i.e. are "desktops" exempt)?

~~~
cobookman
Workstations mount what's called citc (clients in the cloud). And you can use
whatever ide or editor you like. Code is never downloaded directly to the
desktop. You don't really notice any performance issues with this and you get
the benefit of being able to build or include any library without having to
download it all.

Laptops can't mount citc, and you need to either SSH/rdp into a workstation or
use a web based code editor.

Once you've used citc/Piper/blaze you'll find it's a great system and there is
no good alternative... Yet

As for OS choice I believe only goobuntu can be used to modify Google's code
repo.

~~~
CardenB
Wish they used citc/Git/blaze... but oh well. There's a wrapper internally but
I heard it was crap, so I never used it.

~~~
refulgentis
It's heavily used now. Works very well.

------
lsh123
Google was on the other side before:

[https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-
google/](https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-google/)

~~~
zaatar
What was the outcome of this lawsuit?

~~~
lsh123
Was curious too, can't find it anywhere.

------
mylons
uber is a DUMPSTER FIRE right now. feel bad for the engineers there who didn't
steal anything.

------
seesomesense
Sounds a bit like the Aleynikov saga..
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/aleynikov...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/aleynikov-
s-conviction-is-reinstated-by-state-appeals-court)

------
sriram_sun
The medium article also notes that a couple more employees stole confidential
information. Five years later Waymo employees will be bitching and moaning
about corporate overreach and will have these fucktards to thank. (If
allegations are proved).

------
huangc10
> Alphabet’s venture capital arm, GV -- formerly known as Google Ventures --
> is an early backer of Uber.

Correct me if I am wrong, but does that mean Alphabet is suing itself since
Alphabet owns both Google Venture, Waymo and has an investment in Uber...?

~~~
kyleschiller
Yeah, that's wrong, being an investor in a company doesn't make you liable for
their actions.

It does mean that Alphabet stands to lose something if they win the lawsuit,
though whatever stake they do have in Uber is obviously negligible compared to
WayMo itself.

------
lexap
The timing here is just way too coincidental. Coming at a fresh nadir in
Uber's standing in the tech industry, the week after Fowler's post.

For how long did Google know Levandowski had swiped its secrets?

This is how PR war is waged.

------
samfisher83
Google has shares in uber. If they sue them and win their shares are
theoretically worth less. I guess if they win enough money it works out.

------
powera
Patents, or Trade Secrets?

~~~
rrdharan
Misappropriating trade secrets and infringing on patents, as per the Waymo
blogpost:

[https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-
otto-...](https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and-
uber-86f4f98902a1#.c48mb4c3b)

------
gumby
dang: just like we have warnings for [video] and [pdf] could we have warnings
for autoplay video? I accidentally had the sound enabled on my computer.

------
james_niro
I need popcorn and front row seat for this

------
brilliantcode
This will put a permanent blow to Uber, it's in a tight spot already and self
driving cars are it's only chance of survival.

If there's anyway to short Uber or any of the other unicorns kept afloat by
low interest venture capital, please let me know.

------
zump
Anyone here would do the same thing.

~~~
bmon
Maybe you might, but if you give me the choice of being in jail or not, I
think I'd rather keep my windows unbarred.

~~~
zump
He's not going to jail, he's white.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring
repeated requests to stop.

If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com
and promise to follow the rules in the future.

------
dba7dba
So a junior engineer took the files, left Waymo to join Uber and tried to pass
off the files?

Correction. So he's not really a junior engineer. But how can he not think
that everything he access on the Google's network is monitored?

~~~
hluska
Not quite...

First, Levandowski is far from a junior engineer. He's been described as the
tech lead at Waymo and worked on Google Maps and Streetview.

Second, he left Waymo to co-found Otto, a startup which existed for six months
before Uber acquired it for several hundred million dollars.

Third, he's now described as a senior executive at Uber.

I'm not sure where Facebook comes from here. Did I miss something??

~~~
dba7dba
Yes, yes. One must not comment on HN while coding (simple stuff) and eating
snack, and telling kids to do their homework. I work from home today.

My apologies...

~~~
hluska
Don't worry bud and thanks for your reply!! I knew there was a 50% chance that
I was severely confused and I appreciate you taking the time to clarify.

------
ww520
How can you steal patents? Those are public info.

Infringing on patents?

~~~
praneshp
The title is "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets". I
hope the mods can change the HN article's to that.

------
KKKKkkkk1
It's sad how G lost its top engineers and is now trying to get back at them in
the courts.

------
dkarapetyan
This is a little idiotic. Alphabet let all their talent walk out the door. I'm
assuming mostly because of idiotic management and now they're suing. They're
basically losing on all sides.

