Waymo v. Uber trial looks at Kalanick's push for 'cheat codes'

The second day on the stand for Uber ex-CEO Travis Kalanick gets off to a riveting start as Waymo lawyers grill him about what he knew and when he knew it.

It's been a tough morning for Uber's former CEO, Travis Kalanick, who faced a second day of grilling Wednesday from Waymo's lawyers about his efforts to compete against Google's self-driving car program.

That included being shown the minutes of a meeting held April 28 that read: "Top priorities from [Travis Kalanick] ... cheat codes, find them, use them."

Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven: "You said this in a meeting, didn't you?"

Kalanick: "It's quite possible."

Verhoeven: "The golden time is over. It's war time?"

Kalanick: "It sounds like something I would say."

Kalanick is the highest-profile executive to speak so far in the Waymo v. Uber trial at San Francisco's federal courthouse. The case revolves around allegations from Waymo, the self-driving car spinoff of Google parent Alphabet, that Uber stole trade secrets to use for its own self-driving program. If Uber loses, it may be forced to pay nearly $2 billion in damages and halt its self-driving program.

Travis Kalanick leaves the San Francisco federal courthouse Tuesday with his father, Donald Kalanick.
James Martin/CNET

After being grilled by Waymo's attorneys Tuesday and early Wednesday, Kalanick got his chance to give Uber's side of the story. That included being shown a text exchange between Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski -- whom Kalanick had hired to run Uber's self-driving program -- in which both agreed that "second place is first loser" in the race to win the autonomous vehicle market.

Under Kalanick's leadership, Uber became known for an overly aggressive culture rife with gender bias, unprofessional business practices and even a secret tool, called Greyball, that it used to identify authorities trying to crack down on the ride-hailing service. After months of scandals, Uber's top investors forced Kalancick to resign in June.

Throughout the first few days of the trial, Verhoeven has painted a picture of Uberas a company that would do anything to win. He's presented emails, interview transcripts and meeting minutes showing Uber's efforts to "leapfrog" over Google.

Center to the case is Waymo's allegations that its former engineer, Levandowski, pilfered about 14,000 files from it before quitting in 2016 to form his own self-driving truck startup, Otto, which Uber later acquired. Uber says it never received these files from Levandowski.

Levandowski is expected to take the stand during the trial, but so far he's pleaded the Fifth Amendment. So it's unclear if he'll answer questions about Waymo's allegations.

Before acquiring Otto, Uber had commissioned forensics firm Stroz Friedberg to conduct due diligence on Levandowski and his startup. The firm reported that Levandowski possessed Google information, encouraged Google employees to join Otto, met with Uber executives while still working at Google, and had destroyed proprietary information -- "including source code, files, and software pertaining to self-driving cars" -- he had stored on five disks.

Kalanick testified Wednesday that he never read the Uber-commissioned report. But he did say that Uber agreed to indemnify Levandowski if Google ever sued.

Levandowski has a long history of working on self-driving cars. He joined Google as a software engineer in 2007 and helped pioneer the tech giant's self-driving-car project. Much of his work dealt with lidar, formally known as "light detection and ranging." Lidar is one of the main technologies used in both Waymo and Uber's self-driving cars and lets vehicles "see" their surroundings and detect traffic, pedestrians, bicyclists and other obstacles.

Explaining 'cheat codes'

Finally, after more than an hour Wednesday under Waymo's glare, Kalanick got a chance to explain why he wanted to compete against Google, under questioning from Uber lawyer Karen Dunn.

Uber's former CEO said he originally wanted to partner with Google, "kind of like little brother with the big brother," but got worried after hearing rumors of Google getting into ride sharing. He said he tried to meet with Alphabet CEO Larry Page, but Page was angry at Uber for acquiring 40 researchers from Carnegie Mellon's robotics lab.

"Generally, Google was super not happy, unpumped, about us doing this," Kalanick told the court.

Dunn also asked Kalanick to explain the meaning of "cheat codes."

"Cheat codes are like elegant solutions to problems that haven't yet been thought of," he said.

Waymo's Verhoeven challenged that definition, asking Kalanick about gaming. "I think I read in the news you've been playing a lot of video games," he said.

Kalanick: "When I'm between gigs I play iPhone games sometimes."

Verhoeven: "You know what a cheat code is. You don't have the game but you can cheat and get to the next level."

Kalanick: "No."

And with that, the judge allowed Kalanick to leave the court.

source:CNet