Anthony Levandowski
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Donald Trump pardons ex-Waymo, Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski
Anthony Levandowski, an engineer convicted of stealing information about self-driving car tech from Google/Waymo, has been pardoned by Donald Trump.
Ex-Waymo engineer Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison
US District Judge William Alsup has sentenced Anthony Levandowski, the former lead Waymo engineer at the heart of a trade secret legal battle between the Alphabet subsidiary and Uber, to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors sought a 27-month sentence, while Levandowski requested a one-year home confinement, telling the court that his recent bouts with pneumonia makes him susceptible to COVID—19. Alphabet filed a lawsuit against Uber in 2017, accusing the company of colluding with its former employee to steal secrets from Waymo.
Uber's former self-driving lead pleads guilty to stealing from Google
After about three years of legal wrangling between Uber and Waymo over self-driving car tech, the engineer at the center of it has agreed to plead guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google. Anthony Levandowski was a lead engineer on the self-driving car project that's now known as Waymo, until he left to form his own company, Otto, which Uber then acquired. Reuters reports that the agreement will see all the other criminal charges go away while he admits to taking a file that tracked Google's goals for its self-driving car project. A court already ruled that Levandowski owes Google $179 million for violating his contract, and he has declared bankruptcy. Prosecutors said they will recommend a sentence of fewer than 30 months.
Ex-Waymo engineer Levandowski ordered to pay Google $179 million (updated)
A court has ordered Anthony Levandowski to pay Google $179 million to end a contract dispute. He was once one of Google's most prized talents as someone who helped pioneer its work on self-driving vehicles. However, their relationship turned sour after he left the tech giant, which then accused him of poaching talents to start a new company and of stealing trade secrets to start his own firm.
Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'
Larry Page's tenure as Googler-in-chief has heralded the death of many ambitious experiments, but even he refuses to kill the self-driving car. His project head, Anthony Levandowski, has now asked the car makers of Detroit to sign up with Mountain View for hardware testing, saying that if driverless cars are not ready by the next decade, then it's "shame on us as engineers." There's still some way to go before the tech is road-worthy, but Google is already working with insurers to work out how your car is going to handle making that call to Geico when things go wrong.
