Well, that was anticlimactic: Google and Uber settle self-driving car suit for $245m stake 

Waymo shocked a packed courtroom last Friday, announcing they had reached a settlement with Uber after only 5 days.

In what may be the most over-hyped court proceeding in recent history, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, reached a settlement with Uber on Friday in their legal dispute over trade secrets.

Well, that was anticlimactic: Google and Uber settle self-driving car suit for $245m stake 

Waymo will receive $244.8m worth of stock in Uber — a real steal compared to the $1B cash settlement Waymo originally proposed last year.

What are the deets?

The settlement gives Waymo a 0.3% stake in Uber at a $72B valuation. Uber also had to promise to work with Alphabet to ensure no Waymo confidential information will be incorporated into Uber’s technology in the future.

Kinda sounds like hiring the Hamburglar to guard your Big Mac, but hey…

According to Reuters, the real punishment for Uber comes in the form of lost time: putting the company well behind on their plan to compete in the autonomous-driving race.

A bland ending to a spicy suit

Since Waymo filed against Uber last February alleging Uber’s ex-employee Anthony Levandowski stole 14k confidential files from Waymo, news publications have been touting it as the fight of the year.

But alas, the trial that was expected to last weeks ended after a fairly uneventful 5 days, just before Levandowski was scheduled to take the stand.

On the bright side, Kalanick had some juicy sound bites

During his time in the hot seat, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick lamented about Uber and Google’s soured “big brother, little brother” relationship, and called Google founder Larry Page “a little angsty” and “unpumped,” about Uber starting to develop its own self-driving technology.

Yeah, we’d be totally ‘not stoked’ either…

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