Google accuses Uber of creating a fake company in order to steal its tech

Going forward, I don't think we'll ever see another taxi company with the balls and cash that Uber has (or had).

Bragging isn't the problem, if what they're doing is illegal, then it should be handled accordingly. They might be thinking that they are thinking out of the box, and you might have to break some laws, but those laws are actually blocking progress. So, not necessarily a bad thing depending on the law being broken.

Google Drive logs file downloads, so that's how they got those records.

Plenty of enterprises have certificate-based access to their employee network, none of this seems particularly creepy on Google's part.

Testimony: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...

A work laptop that was rarely if ever used is the device in question.

TortoiseSVN was installed to access the repo. If the laptop wasn't normally used, that's a fairly regular thing to do if you want to set up the laptop to get access legitimately.

All the data was downloaded, but reading between the lines, that's just a SVN checkout, which is going to get everything in the repo by default unless you request a specific subdirectory.

A few days later a UDB drive is attached for numerous hours.

A few days after that, another operating system is installed, and the laptop is almost never used again.

All of this can be explained away as benign, but it's also possible it was intended to look that way. This could just as easily be explained as someone trying to access thee data and obscure the fact as it could be someone trying to set up a work laptop they plan to use while away from the office for a few days when they haven't bothered for to set it up for years prior because they had no need.

This would look a lot more damning if Google was asserting that Levandowski was not supposed to have access to the SVN, or had not needed any access to it prior to this point, but unless I'm missing it, they aren't saying that (although they do a good job of making it easy to assume that).

That said, that he set up the company that would later become Otto prior to all this access (with the assurance it would not compete), and also noted to numerous people that he planned to start his own self driving car company prior to the above actions (both according to the original filing though), does cast them in a somewhat different light. That there is evidence of other people that left exporting specific documents from Drive days and/or hours prior to their departure does not look good.

Information omitted that make the testimony one that is obviously presented to do maximum damage:

0) Did Levandowsky have more than one laptop? The testimony cites a laptop he was issue for several months but connected to Google's network only three times over those months he had it. Since he worked at the company during the time, I think it is reasonable to assume that he had more than one laptop and this was one that was issued and never really used.

1) Since this laptop was never really used, it's reasonable that it would get out of date. It's possible that it was used infrequently enough that changes in security policies in the Google autoupdate software would cease to work because it missed a critical security update were a full-reinstall was the simplest path to resolution, especially for a laptop that wasn't well used with data and settings worth preserving. I've seen this situation first hand at prior employers. It especially happens when a critical security update doesn't get applied in time.

2) Was the SVN repository in question one that Levandowsky had a legitimate business need to access? Had he previously accessed that repository on a different laptop that he used more regularly?

3) How many people involved in Google's self driving car program had access to this particular repository? What percent of the self driving engineers does this represent?

4) A Transcend RDF5 card reader was attached to the laptop 3 DAYS AFTER the repository was downloaded. No mention was made about a card inserted into the reader. Was any physical volume ever mounted through the card reader. If so, what kind of physical volume was mounted and how big was it? Was it large enough to store all 9.7 GB of data in the repository? Are there any logs that show files were copied from the laptop to a storage volume, assuming one was ever attached.

5) Was this card reader ever attached to any other device owned by Google that Anthony had access to? Assuming he did attach a storage volume and assuming he did copy files, is it possible that he was just moving files from this device to another one he used? Was this possibility investigated?

6) Five files were exported to his Google Drive on one occasion and another later. The later copied file, a "weekly update", is hardly the type of file that would suggest wrongdoing for anyone whose seen the typical "weekly updates" teams at big companies write. The contents may be sensitive, but they are typically high level and contain few if any details that allow reproducibility. How were those six files accessed later and from what other devices? What's in those files and why are they sensitive/important? How can each file enable a competitor?

There are too many missing dots in that testimony to actually take it seriously, especially since it's been written to maximally insinuate wrongdoing for all three engineers listed.

After reading this testimony, my opinion is that this is absurd and should be dismissed. It's entirely too circumstantial and the forensic "expert" hardly investigated and answered questions that highly relevant to interpreting Levandowsky's actions.

Continental, the big German auto parts company, bought ASC, and is putting the technology into mass production. Continental says they can get the price way down, and they probably can.

There are also about a half dozen other flash LIDAR startups, some of which might even ship someday.

[1] http://www.advancedscientificconcepts.com/products/peregrine...

Then about the bottom employees. Think a minute about what employees are left in that kind of environment and the psychological baggage they might carry.

And Boeing could easily compete with United and American right now, the extra costs of hiring pilots and crews are minute for them. But it doesn't make sense on many levels. I'm pretty sure car makers will focus on making the self driving tech, and sell it to customers like Uber. Uber will have to win like car rental companies do today, brand and location. If it is installed on the most phones that will winin the near term, at least until how we use our devices entirely changes.