How relationship between Uber and Google soured and skidded into litigation
San Francisco — When Uber Technologies was raising venture capital in 2013 it was one of the hottest deals. No one was more eager to write a cheque than Bill Maris and David Krane of Google Ventures, since renamed GV, but not everyone there agreed. The firm already had an investment in a competitor, Sidecar, and Uber was demanding what looked like a sky-high valuation. Maris and Krane prevailed, and the deal is now regarded as GV’s greatest success. On paper, the firm’s initial 2013 investment of $258m gained about 14 times its value in the next three years to more than $3.5bn. But now Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent, is suing Uber for theft of trade secrets, alleging that one of the top engineers in its self-driving car programme left with thousands of confidential files, including designs that helped him start self-driving truck company Otto and then quickly sell it to Uber. Uber denies those claims. The lawsuit, filed by Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo, has jolted the ...
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