clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

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.

a self-driving Way car drives down a residential street Waymo

Waymo, formerly Googles 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]

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]

Disneys 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

Google wants businesses to text with its Android Messages service

The company is continuing to expand the reach of its next-generation texting app.

U.S. airplane pilots are reporting more drone sightings, but no collisions yet

1,274 possible drone sightings were reported.

Trust study: Californians don’t like tech as much (they really don’t like tech as much)

A new survey shows Bay Area residents are warier than before about its homegrown industry.

Surprise! It’s 2017 and Square is thriving

Remember when Jack Dorsey’s Square was supposedly crumbling? I do.

A company that provides air traffic management for drones just raised money from Microsoft and Airbus

Most major U.S. airports are already using AirMap’s drone software.

We’re consuming too much media. It’s time to detox our brains.

For many of us, generating and managing the ceaseless flow of news, social media and questionable facts has become a full-time job.

Full transcript: The Too Embarrassed to Ask team answers listener questions about Apple’s AirPods

Yes, sometimes they fall out of your ears.

Facebook is starting to put ads in the middle of its videos

Many publishers have trouble making money off Facebook videos — this could change that.

Google researchers have cracked a key internet security tool

But the tool remains in wide use.

This Is Cool

Watch a trained bee roll a tiny soccer ball into a goal

It’s part of research into the surprising learning capabilities of small brains.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for Vox Recommends

Get curated picks of the best Vox journalism to read, watch, and listen to every week, from our editors.