They'd own a broken company. Bear in mind that this sort of litigation can run five to ten years if you let the lawyers on both sides wrestle to their hearts' content. It becomes all consuming. Executives spend much of their time preparing for depositions, tussling about what ambiguous documents mean, tussling about what obvious documents might mean if you try hard to misinterpet them, etc.
It's no fun to be working in such an environment. Everyone who can afford to get out, gets out.
Perhaps even enough cash to create the dominant ride hail company from scratch.
Coca-cola was about to buy Gatorate for $13B. Buffett squashed the deal at the 11th hour and Pepsi paid $14B. Buffett presumably thought that Coca-cola could use the $13B to make its own sports drink. It's still not clear which company was wiser.
What do you mean by that? Could they actually be awarded ownership of Uber if the damages were larger than a cash amount Uber could pay? Or do you mean indirectly, like, Uber gets found liable for say $10bn, and Google offers isntead to buy a controlling share of Uber and then forgive the liability?
> Could they actually be awarded ownership of Uber if the damages were larger than a cash amount Uber could pay?
Sure, although that's an extremely unlikely outcome. Normally the company would be liquidated to pay the judgment (this is basically what happened in Bollea (Hogan) v Gawker - Gawker couldn't afford the damages, so had to declare bankruptcy and sell itself to pay for them).
It amounts to the same thing though - when the company gets liquidated, Google can buy all the assets and continue to operate the business, knowing that all the money they pay will be going right back into their own pockets.
Obviously, it runs the risk someone else will come along and buy the company instead, but any other buyer will have significant ongoing IP concerns by using google tech vs re-engineering stuff. Hence, Google will probably outbid other buyers since the company has more utility to them than to others.
