Waymo: Uber Plotted With Former Exec Before He Left Google (axios.com)

Ina Fried, writing for Axios: Lawyers for Google's former self-driving car unit showed internal Uber emails Wednesday that it says bolster its case that former executive Anthony Levandowski was conspiring to steal trade secrets before he left Waymo. The parties are in court Wednesday trying to convince a federal judge to halt Uber's work on self-driving cars. In arguing for an injunction, Waymo lawyers argued that Uber and Levandowski devised a plan to come up with a company for Uber to later buy. Uber did later purchase Otto, a self-driving truck company where Levandowski was a founder. "Clandestine plan": "Secretly Levandowski and Uber were planning while he was still at waymo and negotiating a deal," Waymo outside attorney Charles Verhoeven said, siting internal Uber e-mails, including some from former Uber executive Brian McClendon, a former Google Maps head who ran some of Uber's advanced technology operations before leaving the company in March. "There was this clandestine plan all along that Uber and Levandowski had a deal."

Comments

Relaxed code of ethics?

[bettodavis]

After hearing that Tim Cook told their CEO off for their shenanigans, and a significant increase of similar news items, one has to wonder if Uber has a serious problem of dishonesty, starting at the CEO level.

Re:Uber is done

[Archangel Michael]

. Both Uber and Levandowski should spend some serious jail time

You can't throw a company in Jail. However, as I have said many times over, we should be able to throw everyone involved at Uber in Jail, including all the CxOs and the entire board of directors.

The fix for corporate malfeasance isn't fining a company, but jailing everyone involved. Oh, and corporate death penalty, by revoking the Corporation's charter. Leave the investors hanging onto worthless stock, and corporate culture will change.