That relationship has since set off a legal morass, with Google’s self-driving vehicle business — now called Waymo — accusing Mr. Levandowski of creating Otto as a front to steal trade secrets from Google, then using the findings with Uber’s driverless cars. How Uber and Waymo Ended Up Rivals in the Race for Driverless Cars - By MIKE ISAACMAY 17, 2017 SAN FRANCISCO — At a technology conference in mid-2014, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin presented the company’s first prototype for a self-driving car. At one point, Google promoted Uber as a transportation option in the Google Maps app, and Uber drivers relied on Google Maps. Uber had crossed the line, Waymo said in legal documents, with Mr. Levandowski’s start-up created as a way for Uber to steal trade secrets and copy its designs for lidar — short for light detection and ranging, a crucial hardware component in an autonomous vehicle. The night before the 2014 tech conference, Mr. Kalanick received a call from Mr. Drummond, who said Mr. Brin may raise the possibility of Google’s dabbling in the ride-hailing market onstage the next day — a way to monetize autonomous vehicles — according to three people familiar with the conversation. Uber’s reliance on Google Maps was making him nervous, especially after Google started “rate-limiting” Uber’s use of the service, asking Uber to pay for access over time. Mr. Levandowski had grown impatient with the pace at Google’s self-driving car unit, which was suffering from infighting and had been slow to move forward with some of its plans, according to two people familiar with Mr. Levandowski.
