The most remarkable thing about Waymo v. Uber is that so many of the people following the lawsuit are essentially rooting for Google to crush a smaller firm with a lawsuit. It’s a tale as old as time: a maverick upstart galls a bigger, more established competitor, and the bigger guy strikes back in the courts. It’s practically an American fairy tale, and yet Uber’s lawyers are hard-pressed to get this archetypal narrative to stick. Nobody sees Uber as the underdog.
For one thing, through a collision of multiple scandals, Uber has become extraordinarily unpopular, and the discovery process in this lawsuit hasn’t done much to alleviate its reputation as an unethical, underhanded company. But the other part is that the supposed maverick upstart hasn’t managed to get one over the complacent megacorporation.
True, Google was furious with Uber’s acquisition of Ottomotto. Travis Kalanick testified today that Larry Page was “super unpumped” about the acquisition, called him “angsty” and “upset.”
Internal emails at Google suggested that even before Levandowski left, Page was worried that he was going to lose him to a competitor.
Ottomotto cofounder Lior Ron testified that the Uber acquisition wasn’t a done deal when they left Google. Ottomotto was playing the field — entertaining negotiations with Lyft and even Larry Page at Google. “I am super pumped about negotiating this deal with LP [Larry Page] and JK [John Krafcik],” Levandowski texted Ron on January 23.
“We need to have hard terms from [Travis Kalanick],” Ron texted him at one point. “Or else we destroy him,” Levandowski replied.
