> It is interesting that Alphabet will accept stock because that means they believe they can carry it to market (or at least, won’t lower its value until it does) which might still take more than a year.

It doesn't mean Alphabet thinks the stock won't lose value, it means that they think that it won't lose enough value to be worth less than what they could have gotten in cash, either in a settlement or (discounted for risk and time, and netted against the expense of continuing) from taking the lawsuit to it's conclusion.

> This could mean Waymo will probably not be able to announce anything significant until then: Uber would suffer from having such a big rival step up.

Is $245 million really worth any significant risk to Alphabet’s position in self-driving cars? I suspect they’d accept the risk to the value of the Uber stock to maximize their own future prospects in that market.

Google already has 7% of Uber so just adding to what they already have.

Alphabet's probably accepting stock because they're one of the most risk-loving investors possible.

They've already got a business that's spinning off tons of cash, so they have no need for money, and instead, are pursuing any possible avenue that has the potential of making $$$ (e.g. all of the other bets).

That amount of money is a rounding error to Google, especially since it's in the form of private equity issued by a company they already have a stake in worth billions. Google probably negotiated for the equity to be included in the settlement just so they had something to show for this case.

Or, it's the best they thought they could given what's provable about the case, their experience in court so far, etc.

Presumably it's possible there are settlement terms having to do with the use/disuse of certain trade secrets, but we may never know.