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

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 is 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, Alphabet’s self-driving car spinoff, that Uber stole trade secrets to use for its own self-driving program. Waymo sued the ride-hailing company last year and wants nearly $2 billion in damages and an end to Uber’s rival project.

This was Kalanick’s chance to give Uber’s side of the story after being grilled by Waymo’s attorneys Tuesday and early Wednesday. That included being shown a text exchange between Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski — whom Kalanick had hired to run Uber’s self-driving program — where 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. 

Verhoeven is painting a picture of Uber as a company that would do anything to win. Verhoeven on Tuesday presented emails, interview transcripts and meeting minutes that showed Uber’s efforts to do anything to win. Waymo also alleged that Uber’s former star engineer, Levandowski, pilfered about 14,000 files from Waymo before he quit that company in 2016 to form his own self-driving truck startup, Otto, which Uber later acquired. 

Waymo must prove Uber not only got its hands on the 14,000 files, but also that it used them to develop its own project. 

Levandowski has pleaded the Fifth Amendment and won’t 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 found that Levandowski did possess 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 that he never read the Uber-commissioned report. He also said that, while Uber had agreed to indemnify Levandowski if Google ever sued, he doesn’t remember that agreement including language about “bad acts.” 

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. 

Finally, after more than an hour under Waymo’s glare, Kalanick got a chance to answer questions from Uber lawyer Karen Dunn, who asked him to explain the meaning of “cheat codes.” 

“Cheat codes are like elegant solutions to problems that haven’t yet been thought of,” he said.

This is a developing story…