Waymo, formerly Google’s self-driving car unit, is suing Uber and its autonomous truck unit, Otto, for allegedly using stolen technology. The suit accuses former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, now leading Uber’s self-driving efforts, of downloading thousands of confidential files before leaving to co-found Otto. Further complicating things, Waymo parent Alphabet is an investor in Uber. — [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Recode Daily: Waymo, the Google car company, says Uber is using stolen self-driving tech
A lawsuit accuses a former Google engineer of taking confidential files before quitting.
Waymo
Two prominent Uber seed investors, Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor, criticized the “toxic patterns” in the company’s behavior and voiced doubts about the independence of the investigation into allegations of sexism and harassment. Outside counsel Eric Holder said Uber has given him free rein to conduct an impartial review. — [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Meanwhile, Uber has lost another key member of its self-driving team: Raffi Krikorian, the senior director of engineering at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. — [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Salesforce, Google, Apple and a raft of other tech companies issued statements opposing President Trump’s rollback of protections for transgender students in public schools. — [Kara Swisher / Recode]
Disney’s Maker Studios unit will stop providing advertising and promotional support to some 60,000 YouTube creators and instead will focus on about 300 who have large followings and are well suited to work with other Disney divisions. — [Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal]
Amazon is fighting a search warrant for recordings from an Echo owned by a murder suspect, contending that conversations with Alexa are protected under the First Amendment. — [Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes]
On the latest episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Upthere CEO Chris Bourdon explains why you may want to use more than one cloud storage service. — [Eric Johnson / Recode]
Top Stories From Recode
The company is continuing to expand the reach of its next-generation texting app.
1,274 possible drone sightings were reported.
A new survey shows Bay Area residents are warier than before about its homegrown industry.
Remember when Jack Dorsey’s Square was supposedly crumbling? I do.
Most major U.S. airports are already using AirMap’s drone software.
For many of us, generating and managing the ceaseless flow of news, social media and questionable facts has become a full-time job.
Yes, sometimes they fall out of your ears.
Many publishers have trouble making money off Facebook videos — this could change that.
But the tool remains in wide use.
This Is Cool
It’s part of research into the surprising learning capabilities of small brains.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
See More:
