In the era of autonomous vehicles, there are two business enterprises that reign supreme: Google and Uber. All seemed to be running peacefully between the technological superpowers until an allegation surfaced on the innovation front: after several years, a former Google employee has now been accused of stealing Google’s trade secrets and delivering them to Uber. In only a matter of time, the driverless car war between Google and Uber will be resolved in court. Stay tuned for this year’s biggest technology pissing contest.
The source of the fiasco between Uber and Google’s parent company, Alphabet’s Waymo (with the autonomous vehicle project in mind), was simply the case of an e-mail sent to the wrong contact. An accidental click of the button by an Uber vendor ended in Waymo opening its inbox to discover a circuit board design nearly identical to its own. The copycat blueprint is said to have been acquired by Anthony Levandowski and two other Google employees. Levandowski, a top Google engineer who also co-founded Waymo in 2009, defected to Uber with thousands of clandestine Waymo documents in hand. But Levandowski wasn’t stealthy enough because now this incident of a carbon copy gone bad has Uber pinned up against a wall with a $1.4-billion-dollar reparations payment.
Uber is a company that has a prominent face in both the technology industry and driverless car arena. So why did the company go through all the trouble of stealing Waymo’s trade secrets? According to Waymo lawyers, anxiety over which technology giant would win the autonomous car race prompted Uber to resort to one last, desperate attempt. Waymo’s lawyers further claimed that Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former CEO, was ready to do whatever it took to beat Google to the finish line. Uber’s lawyers, however, claim that Levandowski’s intel was never used. Additionally, Uber’s case is focused more on denying the actions of its informant rather than accusing Levandowski.
In order to understand where the heat of this case lies, let’s travel deeper into the core of this high-tech blame-game. The trade secrets that Levandowski is accused of stealing have to do with LiDAR technology, which is essentially a GPS for autonomous vehicles. After he stole the documents in 2016, Levandowski created his own driverless truck enterprise, Otto, which was acquired by Uber later in August of that year for $680 million. In addition to the massive pay-check, Uber crowned Levandowski as its vice president of engineering. Waymo claimed the stolen LiDAR schematics then found their way into Uber’s hands, an allegation that the company must now disprove.
If there’s one thing to take away from this case, it’s that when money and power are on the line, especially in this era of technological development, companies will do whatever it takes to maintain their influence and get ahead of their opponents. It’s only a matter of time before the verdict is finalized. Whoever wins, whether it’s Google or Uber, the champion of this legal proceeding will ultimately decide the future of autonomous vehicles.
