Waymo Wants Uber Driverless Cabs Off The Road, Asks Judge To Block Tests

When Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber accusing the cab hailing firm of stealing secrets pertaining to self-driving cars, it was obvious to anyone what Google’s self-driving car division was going to do next. As expected, Waymo is now filing for a federal judge to block Uber from conducting tests of its driverless vehicles, which it just got permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to do.

In the lawsuit that Waymo filed, the Google division accused the founders of self-driving truck startup Otto of taking thousands of files pertaining to autonomous driving technology before leaving the company, Slash Gear reports. As a result, when Uber acquired Otto to use its technology to create a fleet of self-driving cabs, it shouldered the burden that the alleged theft carried.

Understandably, Google doesn’t want vehicles using its stolen technology on the road and making money, especially if it doesn’t get a cut. So now, Waymo is asking a court judge to stop all tests of Uber’s self-driving vehicles.

Waymo is also bolstering its demand with a testimony from forensic security engineer Gary Brown, The Verge reports. After going through the secure network logs at Google, Brown told the court that Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski downloaded and stored over 14,000 files before leaving Google. These files included schematics and the coveted LIDAR technology, all of which were developed exclusively by Waymo.

“When an employee’s device interacts with a Google service or is active on a Google network, those interactions and activities can be recorded in logs that identify the device (by its unique identifiers) and/or the interaction or activity (for example, downloading files from a secure repository),” Brown said in his testimony.

The files were downloaded on December 2015, according to Brown, who also implicated engineers Radu Raduta and Sameer Kshirsagar in the crime. A month later, Levandowski left to form Otto.