Thursday, February 23, 2017

Alphabet Sues Uber Over Waymo's Self-Driving Car Tech

Oh crap. Pass the popcorn, this is about to get good.

Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous car business, has sued Uber for stealing crucial technical information about its self-driving technology. Waymo's lawsuit targets Otto, a promising self-driving truck startup that Uber acquired in mid-2016. As we noted in August, Otto was founded and staffed by former Google employees, including Anthony Levandowski. "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," Waymo writes.