Uber admits ex-CEO Kalanick knew Levandowski had stolen Google information | Hacker News Reader

Uber admits ex-CEO Kalanick knew Levandowski had stolen Google information

sfgate.com

83 pointswfunction31 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196

Is this actually a dupe? Old one says Waymo is making an allegation, this one is saying Uber itself is admitting this...

One of the key points is buried a few paragraphs in.

> "Uber, though, says Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber... The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them."

I have no way of knowing if the above is true, but if so, it paints Kalanick in a far more positive light than the headline suggests.

If I were a CEO and a potential new hire told me he had stolen confidential information, there's no way I'd hire him. Even ignoring lawsuits, I'd be worried that he would turn around and steal my confidential information.

Twice now I've interviewed candidates who in the interview offered to share confidential information from their company with me. In both cases we not only did not hire them, we made it a point to note why we didn't hire them in case they ever applied again in the future.

Once someone admits that they are willing to steal information and basically sell it to other companies there really is no excuse to hire them unless you really want that information. You can't trust them not to steal from you in the future, and even if you don't use the information it's going to be hard to prove that fact if the theft eventually gets discovered.

To be blunt the fact that Travis supposedly told him to destroy the information doesn't make him look much better to me at all. Knowing that Levandowski straight up stole from Google and hiring him anyways makes Travis look either ridiculously incompetent or straight up malicious.

Depends if he winked while saying it. The skeptic in me just sees it as a cover-your-ass move.

It sounds more like they decided to throw Levandowski under the bus. Whether any of that is true or not, they know that it's already an established fact that Levandowski had the disks with Google information and they can't keep pretending they didn't know. The only reasonable course of action is for them to admit that they knew, but that Levandowski was the sole bad actor, and they didn't want anything to do with the stolen information.

I think you mean they decided to throw Levandowski under the self-driving truck.

Levandowski threw himself under the bus. One with a very large "G" logo on the hood.

So is this a fair characterization of the conversation?

L: I've access to Google's lidar designs if we ever need them.

K: Burn it bro. I don't want that stuff traced to us. I'll still buy you out.

Levandowki ends up using the (already stolen) designs anyway as revealed in the accidental email from the 3rd party vendor.

> it paints Kalanick in a far more positive light than the headline suggests.

Not to me, if I'm doing business with someone and they say "oh, I also stole this other stuff you might like" I'd take that as a red flag about their ethical fortitude. The actually appropriate thing to do would be to Google/Waymo of the potential IP threat and insulate Uber from future legal repercussions. Walk away from the acquisition.

The behavior is still unethical.

The actually appropriate thing to do would be to [tell] Google/Waymo of the potential IP threat and insulate

Exactly. That's what Pepsi did.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/07/06/pepsi-alerted-coca-c...

Travis Kalanick is clearly an adrenaline junkie. I understand the start-up CEOs need to be bold but he seems to completely lack the ability to evaluate and minimize risk. Good strategy isn't just about winning every battle, it's also about avoiding the battles you don't need to fight. Travis seems like he's never seen a fight he won't jump into. It's wild.

That reminds me of Sun Tzu. It also reminds me of, I forget who, maybe Jobs, who said not to even compete, just make your competition irrelevant. Ie. Find a way to not even have to fight the battles.

Uber can't make government irrelevant.

Had Kalanick never heard the story of the Monkey's paw before he used the thing?

If others haven't heard of it either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw

Way overblown headline relative to the filing that 3 long days ago.

I am no fan of Uber but this AP writer is terribly sloppy in his formulations.

> Uber knew fired exec had info at center of Google theft case

Absolutely not what it says in the filing.

All the filing says is Lewendowski tells Travis he has five “disks” of data from google. It could be a backup of his pst files, roll out plans for Orkut, cafeteria menues, we have no idea from the filing. So the filing is very far away from both Uber “admitting” it knew and that this data is the “stolen information” central to this case.

> The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them.

So sloppy it’s painful.

This implies than Lewendowski propositioned Travis and said “let’s go build this dirty LIDAR together” and Travis declined. Not supported by the filings!

The incident this refers to was an email thread between Travis and Lewendowski that had two lawyers Cc’d on. This was perfunctory Dislosure that he has some info, and a perfunctory response from Travis saying “don’t bring any info from prior employers.”

If you are going to make a dirty LIDAR you hand off a usb drive on a long walk across the city, not plot in front of your lawyers.

Again, I am no Uber fan, but this is one of the worst pieces of reporting I’ve seen that I can remember. Very misleading article.

It is quite unlikely that five disks would contain cafeteria menus. I don't thing that judge would buy such theory as plausible. In any case, it is goggle data even if not related to cars.

Another question, why would you kept lawyer out of loop if planning to do something dirty? It is dumb to do it over mail, but lawyer won't rat you put and can have advice about how best to hide it (in person not in writing sInce lawyer want to keep license).

Didn't they originally deny that there was any sort of wrongdoing? If so then why should we believe them now? What I mean is

1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything"

2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him"

Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?

Well there's a slight difference, it seems like now that Kalanick has left, they want to use him as a scapegoat, and the narrative here is that Uber as a whole didn't know until now. So theoretically, 1 & 2 could both be true, albeit 2 would be more like "Kalanick knew but didn't tell us".

True, but if so that's still extremely convenient.

Edit: Pardon my cynicism - I'm just a bit suspicious with things like this :-)

Does anyone know how was Levandowski's startup valued at $680M?

Worst case scenario was that Kalanick not only knew this, actually planned it with Levandowski.

Reasoning behind the $680M acquisition could be very important.

What's the worst case scenario for Levandowski in this situation?

Theft is criminal law.

But making and exfiltrating copies of data isn't theft as defined in criminal law (it may be criminal, but not as theft.)

How many million dollars would he keep for each year spent in jail?

The civil lawsuit against him would take care of any money he has left.

> "The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them."

A person that takes a trove of proprietary information like that is unlikely to just destroy it. My suspicion is that he'd keep it for reference until it became a liability.

Deep in my comment history I called Kalanick shady many times before all these headlines...

I suspect this is one of the reasons he stepped down.

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