It looks to me like Uber could take another PR hit, burn a $billion or more on the fallout, raise more billions, and keep on going. Have ethically motivated boycotts ever worked out, historically?
Have ethically motivated boycotts ever worked out, historically?
organizing works!
for anyone interested in more modern day wins, check out "when we fight we win" by greg jobin-leeds and agiarte.
On the other hand, not all of Chavez's boycotts were successful. That includes his final effort, a hunger strike which ultimately killed him (aside from his own death, it was not a particularly successful boycott otherwise either).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Immokalee_Workers
What about misappropriated code? Patents seem like it would be a much more simple situation.
What matters is whether Uber will receive an injection on their self driving car project.
The autonomous vehicle war is going to be over in under 5 years. Uber is all in on that, and they cannot afford to be delayed by any amount of time that is measured in years.
And maybe not by a matter of time measured in months. But how long do court cases take? Years, not months (especially if Google decided to try to make it take longer).
The very worst worst case scenario is that Uber would be barred from using rotating, parabolic, Lidars.
But there are a lot of other ways of making self driving cars that don't use this specific method of sensor technology.
Uber could even just come to an agreement with Google, and license the technology.