Did Uber Steal the Driverless Future From Google?
Travis Kalanick, the chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc., says he needs leadership help. He recently dispatched former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment claims against the company. His security team is reviewing a practice known as “Greyballing.” And he’s no longer going to any more meetings with President Trump.
These damage-control initiatives—in response, respectively, to a leaked video in which Kalanick was rude to an Uber driver, a blog post by a former engineer, an admission that the company had been deliberately misleading police, and a customer boycott—were the result of a month’s worth of public-relations disasters. Taken alone, any of these would have been enough to slow down the famously fast-moving ride-hailing company. Taken together, they’ve caused some to question Uber’s viability and Kalanick’s staying power.
But none of these scandals has the potential financial impact of the one Uber has said the least about: a lawsuit from Alphabet Inc.—the parent of Google and Google’s self-driving car division, now called Waymo—over driverless cars. Waymo says Uber is in possession of, and is basing the future of its business on, technology that was stolen by a former employee.
This story is from the March 20 - March 26, 2017 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
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This story is from the March 20 - March 26, 2017 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
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