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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

The amount of information which must live in the blocked out text is insane. Questions like "Why was it (Waymo) created as a separate company under the umbrella of Alphabet?" have had their answers blocked out. I'm sure beyond the PR, a lot of people would love to see candid answers like that.

The Otto lawyer suggests "Otto" and "Otto Trucking" are two separate entities, but if anyone explains to Larry the difference, it's not visible in this version. I hadn't heard anything about that before and am curious.

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You assume there are candid answers in there, though - in a deposition you answer as little as humanly possible. Your side of lawyers will ask a few key questions, any everything else is from your opposition trying to trip you up.

Well, candid means "truthful and straightforward", doesn't necessarily mean exhaustive. Sure, they are going to give away as little as possible, but considering it is a legal deposition and perjury is a thing, they aren't going to lie or actively dissemble like they might otherwise.

Is it possible Waymo was created this way to address this specific outcome? The title of this article could have been "Larry Page Deposition Uber vs. Google Cars."

Possible, sure. But very few interested people are unaware that Waymo = Google = Alphabet in every sense except a technical legalistic one. I don't really think hiding the Google brand's involvement is of the sort of significance of value to justify the whole Alphabet move.

A theory of my own based on this read: A lot of questions Larry Page was asked were below "his level". Compensation, policy, etc. But presumably, as the CEO of the company when this issue started, he is deposed on it. Maybe with a higher level of vertical structure, Google and 'other bets' legal concerns will go up to the level of that subsidiary's CEO and no further. Or to say otherwise, just that creating the additional level of obfuscation moves Larry and Sergey further from being involved in day-to-day operations, which at Google's size is considerable and presumably take up a significant amount of time to be involved with.

Otto and Otto Trucking could indeed be 2 difference companies. There was even a lawsuit as they both operate in the self-driving tech space... more here: https://www.ottomotors.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/o...

That whole "Otto Trucking" portion was embarrassing, and not for Larry.

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