Looks like Waymo is getting $245 million worth of equity.
Considering there are no direct damages as Uber never actually got anywhere with self driving cars that seems incredibly high.
Basically, Uber is paying google 250m instead of paying AL 250m in earnouts he was supposed to get. All in all good for Uber.
Re:Uber and Waymo Reach Settlement
by jacksmith21006 on Friday February 09, 2018 @02:52PM
(#16343313)
Good for Uber? They lost Lewandowski and their founder. Plus have to pay $250m. Plus lots of things exposed at Uber. How is this a positive?
And Uber can't use any of the trade secrets from Waymo. Maybe I missed something, but isn't this a win for Waymo?
Waymo became a minor investor in Uber in future can vote for Uber to buy or rent it's cars. If I recall correctly Google ventures was an early investor in Uber as well. So Alphabet might own a lot more of Uber once it's Ipo
IIRC it's like 7%. Sure that gets you voting rights, but that's minuscule. I'd be more worried about SoftBank's influence as they have more at stake.
> So Alphabet might own a lot more of Uber once it's Ipo
Huh? Your position of ownership doesn't magically go up once you IPO, it normally only goes down (you get diluted or you liquidate your position).
Many public shares are diluted enough their owners don't vote.
There is no evidence Uber has any trade secrets from Waymo that they would have to stop using. That was why Google settled. If Uber did have any trade secrets they would have lost the case outright.
Uber gave up 245 million dollars. That's not based on nothing.
Really, if it was an open and shut case Uber could have gotten it dismissed. The fact they figured giving up 1/4 a billion dollars was better than continuing to fight says a lot more about their situation than any internet commentators can. The only reason for them to spend that money is because they was a significant chance aka well over 25% they would have lost significantly more by fighting.
They didn’t give up a single dollar. They gave up a tiny sliver of equity that might be worth $245M someday.
It doesn't seem like anything changes. This just looks like a large waste of time and money.