Alphabet claims Uber was hiding the self-driving tech that it allegedly copied | Hacker News Reader

Alphabet claims Uber was hiding the self-driving tech that it allegedly copied

recode.net

152 pointsflinner69 comments

Can't say I'm shocked to see Uber's dishonesty here. From all the other claims against them (Lyft and sexual harassment) it seems like this type of behavior is standard operating procedure.

This culture is set from the top. It's only a matter of time that Travis will step down. Sooner the better so they can start working on improving integrity throughout the organization.

In the 90's, Microsoft was skewered for a lot less.

Based on what proof. The article provided nothing in the way of evidence, just Google's claim. They could claim anything. Since when did HN stop exercising healthy skepticism?

Based on Uber producing the device in question eventually. It's in the article.

And the argument was that they did not go forward on that design. So they took it, investigated it and <please believe this> did not use anything they learned in the process.

Doesn't really matter whether they went forward with the design or not. Google alleged "You took our lidar design, and you could only have gotten that design if Levandowski stole it." Uber initially: "No we didn't!" Uber later: "Actually, here it is, but doesn't matter because we don't like that design anyway."

Uber is playing games that 5 year-olds play when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Let's assume for a moment that this previous design bore many similarities to the google design (which could have happened just because the same people built it not solely because stolen files were used), what if the previous design were only worked on when it was Otto and was discarded when Uber acquired Otto? What would happen then?

Google has specifically stated that their suit is against Uber and not Levandowsky. If this previous design was worked on wholly at Otto pre-acquisition than this lawsuit should be against Levandowsky and in arbitration. This suit is already 1 month old and Uber acquired Otto on September 18th. That's a mere 6 months. If the previous design were scrapped around that date or really only saw significant development before that date, than this lawsuit should be dismissed and focused wholly on Levandowsky and select Otto employees for whom they have evidence to believe were complicit in the alleged acts.

Right now it looks like Google is fishing for an opportunity to hurt and slow down a competitor using a lawsuit instead of being the lawsuit against the person who should have been the defendant in the first place, Levandowsky.

There are hundreds of engineers working on a self driving car effort of their own design for many months even years before Otto was acquired and this lawsuit is wholly unfair to the work those engineers have put in to making that happen. Google is looking a lot like Oracle here using the law to slow down and hurt engineers doing good work.

That's not how the US legal system works. When Uber acquired Otto they became subject to all legal claims against Otto. The notion that an acquisition should somehow extinguish liability is just ridiculous; it would lead to companies engaging in all sorts of shell game M&A activity just to dodge lawsuits.

Also based on a pattern of behavior. These issues are systemic and have been going on for years. This is the same company that ignores sexual harassment claims, illegally tracks and blackmails journalists, deploys highly questionable anti-competitive tactics at will.

You should still wait for hard evidence before accepting Google's claims. Otherwise you will end up accepting false claims simply because they match what you believe about Uber.

Making false claims in the media that have been designed to resonate with and reinforce the current zeitgeist is a pretty easy trick to pull and a lot of people fall for it.

It's easy enough to avoid by waiting for hard evidence

> Otherwise you will end up accepting false claims

I think you mean "may". A lack of hard evidence backing up a claim doesn't necessarily mean the claim is false.

I used to work at a very successful tech company that became the Goliath in its market and saw first hand how the media vilified us and interpreted every little thing we did through evil-colored glasses. I few issues were legitimate criticisms but they were textbook cases of situations where Hanlon's Razor should have been applied. Everyone assumed malice where there there was at worst poor judgement. Eventually the media cycle reached a fever pitch to drive clicks and everything was interpreted in the worst way possible to drive whatever narrative people (just like you) wanted to believe.

Cite me a single shred of evidence to support your claim that they have blackmailed a single journalist.

Uber and its closest competitor Lyft engaged in pretty much all the same competitive actions but only Uber is criticized for them. Everyone criticizes Uber for subsidization tactics to win market share and conveniently ignores that Lyft does the exact same. My observations with my former employee roughly aligns with what I've seen with Uber. 20% or so is legitimate criticism (due to poor judgement) and 80% is hyperbolic and applied to us and our competitors and applies to Uber and its competitors.

Near as I can tell this is a phenomena that applies to every single unicorn that has viable competitors. It happened to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. near as I can tell, the only difference that I can tell between how Uber is being treated and they were treated come down to the zeitgeist when they came of age. The past 2-3 years has seen a sharp increase in polarization of the political atmosphere with a lot more social justice folks in journalistic positions than in years past and Uber is the favorite whipping boy. For example, Apple has been subject to this as well. Apple was widely criticized over labor practices of its suppliers in China despite the fact that it had and continues to have some of the best practices and policing of suppliers in the industry.

Take the Susan Fowler situation. It's a shame and it never should have happened, but in the very same week when her blog post of allegations was published, there was an actual sexual harassment case filed in an actual court against Tesla, but almost no one heard about that because the media loves Tesla.

Everyone I've spoken to that has ever worked at a successful unicorn has related similar stories of unfair criticism, especially when there were viable competitors whose investors are powerful and can drive a story through the journalists they've invested in or have strong relationships with. There's a reason why investors like Marc Andreessen have invested heavily in the career of well known Silicon Valley journalists and it's not because those journalists have an exit strategy that will net him a 10x or 100x return.

> Cite me a single shred of evidence to support your claim that they have blackmailed a single journalist.

Google "uber blackmail journalist". It's an almost 3-year story now. People seem to have short memory when it comes to Uber, but they've been pulling shady shit since almost day one. We've been through many of such discussions on HN since then, they're all searchable through Google and Algolia (the search bar at the bottom).

I get that media outlets can all band against particular company - I believe that's actually happened with Susan Fowler case. But Uber has a long history of frequent misbehaviour; that's not vilifying, that's what this company is.

I just did the search you suggested. It turned up results, none of which show a single example of blackmail. The best I found was a drunk executive speculatively talking about funding opposition journalism on a journalist who was allegedly extraordinarily critical of Uber. Ironically, it looks like you just illustrated one of my points since I'm pretty sure that that journalist and the journalists who broke that stories are both Marc Andreessen funded.

So again, please show me where they blackmailed a journalist because I failed to find any evidence for that. What happened in particular situation you just cited doesn't even come close to meeting the criteria for being blackmail. That said, I want to be charitable here, so I'll assume you're talking about some other incident around that time that I'm unfamiliar with. Was there some other instance you're talking about where they blackmailed a journalist as you've claimed?

> In particular, Michael is reported to have singled out PandoDaily editor-in-chief Sarah Lacy, suggesting that he already knew something about her and could have his team of journalists confirm it.

First article. It's basically creating chilling effects against reporting against Uber. I'm sure every journalist, and every person, has done something they wouldn't want to wind up in an article of the New York Times - and unless a company like Uber goes up against them, those things almost always don't.

That's editorializing, not blackmail.

Here's an alternate account of that conversation by someone else that was at the dinner that suggests that it was a completely different conversation than was portrayed:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6198250

I did some more research and it turns out Ben works for Buzzfeed, which shortly before that conversation got a $50 million investment from A16Z, which is one of the biggest investors in Lyft. I'm not suggesting Lyft is the one playing dirty here but given all the money Andreessen has poured into journalists I wouldn't be surprised. VCs generally operate on the "no conflict, no interest maxim".

Went down the rabbit whole even further and it turns out Andreessen is the first and largest investor shareholder in PandoMedia/PandoDaily with 8%:

https://pando.com/about/

That's the media company that Emil was talking about at dinner. Does it not strike you as odd that one of the most vociferous critics of Uber years ago also has as a primary shareholder, Lyfts's biggest shareholder?

This isn't an excuse of things that have happened at Uber, but I definitely think these conflicts of interest should be receiving a lot more scrutiny since you can make any company look bad by just dedicating more resources to investigating it and painting everything you find in the worst light possible (like what happens with Apple)

> there was an actual sexual harassment case filed in an actual court against Tesla, but almost no one heard about that because the media loves Tesla.

I'm always skeptical of these kind of claims about "the media", and if you're talking about AJ Vandermeyden there seem to be plenty of reports:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Vandermeyden+tesla

Please compare the number of upvotes and comments on HN for both stories. I better you the upvotes and comment activity difference between both stories is one if not two orders of magnitude greater.

> but almost no one heard about that because the media loves Tesla.

because it's a totally different story and probably will favor tesla. her report is pretty vague. and if you know that hiring engineers is pretty hard, you would also know that it's not just that a company is discriminating. I mean in the place where I live, searching for a good engineer is extremly hard. Also in the schools there are only sitting one or two woman and 28 other guys, it's not just that there are a lot of woman who want to work in tech, there aren't.

Travis won't step down, and no one can make him. He still has a majority of the voting rights (Wait, is that right? I know I heard that somewhere).

He seems like the type to let the ship sink, just so long as he gets to stay the captain.

As any entrepreneur who believes in their own vision should imo.

I've been thinking about this lately. The whole character assasination of Uber happenned in the last 2 months - while all the issues, have, allegedly, been around for a long time. And all this publicity right in time for the multi-billion lawsuit...

Now, I don't know enough about the situation to come to any conclusions, but the fact that no one here on HN have yet expressed the same doubts.

It's all the YC companies, if you've noticed. They're searching all of them for dirt. Some of that dirt is real, though. I'm taking a wait and see attitude to let things play out in court. There's no prize for being the first to judge someone.

I disagree that the reporting on Uber's crap started two months ago:

"Peter Thiel: Uber is most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley" (2 years ago)

"Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes" (4 months ago)

"Uber's dirty tricks quantified: Rival counts 5,560 canceled rides" (3 years ago)

"Uber Database Breach Exposed Information Of 50,000 Drivers" (2 years ago)

"Uber VP: we could spend $1M to take revenge on journalists" (2 years ago)

"Uber secretly investigated its legal foes — and got caught" (9 months ago)

"Lyft Accuses Former COO of Stealing Confidential Docs Before Joining Uber" (2 years ago)

"Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us" (2 years ago)

Let's not jump to conclusions: Waymo maybe looking to sharp-elbow into ride-sharing. These are still allegations and there's no verdict/settlement yet.

In general, the bigger the venture, the bigger the damage of acting dishonestly and the bigger the bulls' eye for lawsuits painted on the side. Uber, being the category first-mover, is going to attract a lot of hate by being giant and uncool, even without the political endorsements.

It would be great if Lyft, Uber and Waymo did ride-sharing and were as honest/socially-responsible as possible. That would be better competition for selfish passengers like me. I prefer Lyft these days but may look at Uber again if they show they a consistent pattern of honorable behavior.

At this point I think they are trying the Microsoft/Oracle strategy. It looks like they are using a lawsuit and the discovery process are to get enough information to determine which, if any, of their patents may have been infringed and they are now trying to figure out how to extract rent from the first-mover. It's hard to assert patents against black boxes that you don't know the implementation details of. Using discovery to pry open the black box is underhanded but one way to get a look at an implementation normally hidden from view. It's a slimy tactic but given how profitable patent royalties are I can't blame them for trying.

I know the law has a complicated relationship with logic, but in normal usage, Uber's claim that it is no longer interested in LIDAR, even if taken at face value, clearly has no bearing on the question of whether it was party to an earlier theft of LIDAR-related documents.

> Uber denies this and says it eventually produced the device in question. A representative for Uber told Recode the company did not initially produce the device because they did not think they were required to do so as its designs had been abandoned.

In litigation, one side serves the other side "discovery requests," which are pointed requests for specifically described documents or information. Everyone produces as little as they can get away with in response to discovery requests. Here, it sounds like the discovery request was possibly susceptible to the interpretation that it was only asking for designs that Uber was still actively pursuing, or at least that's how Uber originally tried to interpret it and an employee blew up their spit at a deposition. It's hard to tell without knowing the exact wording of the discovery request.

Alternatively, some litigants produce as much as they can get away with in order to flood their opponent with irrelevant documents, drive up their legal costs, and delay the case.

Just an observation .... locating the 20th century car industry in Detroit gave them an unfair advantage over California. Cars have to function correctly in bad weather -- rain, ice, snow, etc.

Taxicabs especially. Imagine a transport system in a city like New York or DC where taxis don't function in a rainstorm. It's in bad weather that drivers earn their pay.

I know from experience that the Tesla driver assistance stuff doesn't work in the rain. It won't engage. "Can't see well enough" is what it says.

Maybe these Sili Valley types should stop fighting over fair-weather car control stuff, and spend the same money setting up development shops somewhere besides endless-summer California.

Patents only last 20 years. It's going to take 30 to convert the transport network.

Like Pittsburgh?

Especially Pittsburgh with bridges and hills.

I think the point was that Uber's self-driving effort is located in Pittsburgh, so when the parent says

> Maybe these Sili Valley types should stop fighting over fair-weather car control stuff, and spend the same money setting up development shops somewhere besides endless-summer California.

that's exactly what Uber's done.

We get the it, you work for Cruise.

Where an Uber autonomous vehicle went the wrong way up a 1-way street?

Waymo has been testing up around Lake Tahoe in the snow, and in Arizona to deal with dust, and in Washington to deal with rain.

Ford and GM are both testing in Michigan.

Here's Drive.ai demoing L4 in a downpour at night (really impressive):

https://youtu.be/GMvgtPN2IBU

But in general terms it's logical to get everything working well in optimal conditions before moving on to challenging weather. I don't think they consider any of this stuff to be unsolvable, short of maybe a whiteout blizzard, but, you know, first things first.

Nobody has the capital to set up a taxi system across the US simultaneously. Even Uber, which doesn't have to pay for the cars up front, has to launch a city at a time. Self driving taxis will follow a similar path, launching in Mountain View by the end of the year (according to Alphabet's original claims), expanding to Silicon Valley and LA, and then eventually expanding everywhere. Owning personal transportation in Silicon Valley alone is a nearly billion dollar opportunity.

> Just an observation .... locating the 20th century car industry in Detroit gave them an unfair advantage over California. Cars have to function correctly in bad weather -- rain, ice, snow, etc.

Um, that's fanciful thinking. Especially since early cars were notoriously uncomfortable and unreliable.

Detroit had three things going for it. The first was proximity. Remember, this is 1900. Transport by rail and ship is primary. Detroit is directly on both between Chicago and New York. And the entire Northeast simply dwarfs the rest of the country in population at the time: http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/2000/2064/2064.htm

The second was Ransom Eli Olds. Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day because the equivalent of Fairchild/The Traitorous Eight all spawned out from companies that were associated with Oldsmobile or Olds, himself.

> It's going to take 30 to convert the transport network.

Not even close. AI will be better than humans at driving almost immediately. Here's a little inside tip:

Humans SUCK at driving.

It is a boring, monotonous task that demands full attention suddenly and randomly. Humans make very poor decisions in these changeover situations. Bad weather, bad signage, and other bad drivers confound human drivers at every turn.

Completely agree. The second and more important problem is that humans suck worse at legislation and governance. I expect self driving cars to take off in developing countries and forward thinking countries (like Singapore) well before they take off in the United States.

> It's going to take 30 to convert the transport network.

I think the tech is amazing from a software standpoint, but the amount of resources being dumped into self-driving cars could be better spent fixing our broken (non-existent) mass transit system in America first. I wrote a post on this a few months ago:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...

In the past year have we ever gone a single month without hearing about malfeasance, exploitation or sexual harassment within that company?

April alone has tabloid month!

Perhaps Uber's CEO should resign so the company can get some breathing room and reboot their brand.

While the news makes sensationalist headlines and online outrage, sadly it doesn't seem like consumers care about Uber's behavior.

In most of the world there are no choices. In London there's either Uber or Addison Lee, but the price is lower on Uber. When everyone is forced to play for profits plenty of companies will emerge quickly but for now Uber just burns VC money so they can dominate the market and everyone else stays away (because no one else has free money to burn).

We'll find out soon enough whether burning VC money for market penetration was a good idea or just a SV folly.

Is Uber the only one burning through VC money? Near as I can tell, all the companies are subsidizing to win market share while they figure out how to control costs and get the most bang for their subsidization buck. Can anyone point me at a single ridesharing company that isn't heavily subsidizing the fares?

Assuming they are all subsidizing fares (which I'm almost certain is the case), the question we should be asking ourselves is which ridesharing company is earning the most incremental revenue per subsidy dollar spent?

As per naked capitalism's critique, pouring money into Uber will never make fuel, cars or salaries cheaper. There is no magic point where Uber reaches a certain efficiency of scale and stops needing to subsidise every ride.

This is why I use Uber as much as possible: they're doomed, and every ride taken in a redistribution of wealth from silicon valley investors to consumers.

Fuel: not Uber's problem. Any solutions/advances benefit all market participants equally.

Cars: also not Uber's problem. Any solutions/advances benefit all market participants equally.

Salary: very much Uber's problem. Also Lyft's problem. And Didi's problem. And a taxi industry problem. Self driving tech will solve this problem in time.

So the first two will improve over time. The third impacts every player in the market.

Seeing that there is a definite need and this market isn't going to go away, it seems like Naked Capitalism is focusing on the wrong problem (or is focusing on the right problem if the problem is how to drive clicks.

The right problem is who in this market that isn't going away is going to be the best at optimizing for utilization of fixed cost assets (cars), variable costs (fuel/energy) and gets enough IP in the self driving car space to have a defensive patent portfolio.

Uber is really the only player that has a strong presence in multiple markets in addition to human transportation. They have food delivery, courier services, long-haul transportation. I wouldn't be surprised if they go after UPS/FedEx and Instacart at some point. The more diversified they are, the better the utilization they can achieve. To me that suggests that they can play the subsidization game against everyone else much more competively since instead of subsidies, they can provide their contractors with more opportunities to earn when behind the wheel.

To date, I have yet to hear a single argument why Uber is doomed that doesn't apply equally to every competitor. The only way I can see Uber being doomed is if the ridesharing market is doomed. That said, I'd love to hear more arguments about why the entire market might be doomed or why the future might favor Tesla's approach or why one of the other competitors in the market has a better shot. I don't see it. Uber near as I can tell is Amazon, Part Deux.

This biggest question on my mind iswhen investors for all these ridesharing companies tire of this war of attrition and no longer want to subsidize the purchase of market share. When that happens, Uber won't be the only company that needs to raise prices by stopping subsidization.

Again, I would love to hear more arguments that aren't simply driven by dislike for Uber by some astroturfing comment army.

Uber is in my city (UK), no competing services are.

Traditional taxis are a huge PITA here, 30+ minute arrival times if they even arrive, pretty high prices compared to the rest of the country.

Plenty of people are complaining about Uber here, but they are reliable.

I'm also in the UK (Newcastle) and the story is the same here.

Perhaps Uber's CEO should resign so the company can get some breathing room and reboot their brand.

Maybe, unless Kalanick leaving were to be seen as the captain abandoning his sinking ship. At this point it's not really clear if Uber's reputation can actually be rescued. It's pretty bad. That said, plenty of companies make a huge amount of money despite everyone thinking they're terrible. There's no reason why Uber can't become the 'budget airline' or 'discount retailer' of ride hailing apps.

Do they have to rescue it? The media has gone so overboard that I jumped off the Uber hating bandwagon about a month ago when I realized that it wasn't a pattern of wrongdoing by the company but a pattern of journalistic malpractice. It's interesting to see that many others are now realizing the same.

What if it's both?

I can buy that. I think they have things to address, but it doesn't appear to be any worse than at other companies. It just looks like they've received far more scrutiny the same way Apple does. Take their diversity report, for example. It's roughly in line with the diversity report of its peers, which suggests that it has the same issues to address in the same proportions.

I see Uber as our generation's Groupon. Wildly overvalued slowly heading to a cliff.

They do have revenue, but not profit, lost $3B last year despite seeing growth in revenue . The business goal (the product itself) is 10000x times better than Groupon. Car service is more direct. Groupon isn't a bad idea either, but the experience isn't as direct and as Uber. You see, emailing me / texting me offers is great, but I don't have time to scroll down and read the same kind of email everyday. If instead at checkout coupon/promote code is added that would have been great. I have Target, Walgreen apps on my phone. When I visit the store, I clip the coupon onto my account and then checkout. This still requires me to search on the app, but at least it's at my fingertip. It would be better off if I get the promotion regardless. The use of Uber is also in the user's hand, but spontaneous.

Anyway, I think Uber will stay, but I suspect Uber may have to scale back its global expansion. Perhaps I am short-sighted. It would be interesting to see the revenue and spending geographically.

> The business goal (the product itself) is 10000x times better than Groupon.

To illegally set up a non-compliant taxi service that doesn't pay taxes, that doesn't pay minimum wage to its employees, that has been banned already in several countries, that ignores human safety introducing illegally self-driving cars, it is not a very good business model.

Well I am not saying it is ethical or not, but I clearly said it's "business goal", not "business model".

If only legal taxi services weren't so uniformly terrible. I don't like Uber's culture, but I still use it whenever Lyft isn't available and the only other option is a taxi whose credit card reader is "broken".

Oh yes it is… to the extent that you get away with it, without consequences (in that light, getting banned is bad IF you can't also break that law and get away with it).

It's much like arbitrage, making money or gaining control of a market by exploiting weakness on the grandest scale possible. IF there are consequences for the behavior, then you've just illustrated one way to fail, perhaps on the same grand scale (see: Enron). If there are no consequences you're just doing another type of arbitrage and rather than being a poor business model you're an unmatchably superior business model that others must emulate or die.

Jury's out on whether Uber is the former or the latter. Until that's clear, the CEO will not resign or back off in the slightest, because they can't: it's a strategy of never backing down or admitting weakness in any sense, with the tone set from the top. If they can get powerful enough friends and never face consequences, they win. If they're more powerful than the law, they are the law.

We do see a tendency in modern trade agreements to hold entire countries responsible for injuring the profitability of large companies. In that light, Uber bans could be made illegal, under certain conditions, much like banning tobacco advertising can be made illegal.

It's worth noting that at least where I am (Australia), taxi owners/operators don't pay minimum wages to their independent contractor drivers. The business model of the incumbent taxi services is fundamentally not really different from Uber's.

- Not illegal obviously since they been able to stay around for a long time.

- Their revenue comes from driver fare, and its actually in their best interest to increase rates.

- Have the self driving cars been rolled out? And if they have, how have they been done illegally?

That's not fair to Andrew Mason, who seems to be a very decent human.

"In the latest filing, Alphabet says Uber hid a lidar device Levandowski designed based on these files. The company says Uber obfuscated the existence of a piece of lidar technology at an April 12 hearing.

Uber denies this and says it eventually produced the device in question. "

Is the docket for this available somewhere? I hate reports that won't link (or provide) the original source.

I just use this search[0]. I believe this is the latest filing[1]. Full docket is here[2]. Note that many of the filings arent mirrored publicly, so you would need to buy them through PACER.

[0] https://www.documentcloud.org/public/search/Waymo

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3676397-Waymo-Motion...

[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4609586/waymo-llc-v-ube...

I'm a bit confused — has anything developed since the lawsuit was filed in late February[0]?

[0]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3474305-1-Main.html

Yes, you're actually commenting on a thread which is discussing the latest updates.

From the article: "In the latest filing, Alphabet says Uber hid a lidar device Levandowski designed based on these files. The company says Uber obfuscated the existence of a piece of lidar technology at an April 12 hearing."

https://www.recode.net/2017/4/21/15390074/alphabet-uber-hidi...

Sorry — that's what I get for skimming.

Is it the secret of embedding lidar at the trailer hitch in your cars so that it's sure to get smashed if someone rear ends you?

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