Who is Anthony Levandowski, and why is Google suing him?
Such an interesting case to watch from the outside.<p>Clearly the guy did not realize that Google spends inordinate amount of resources watching their own employees. When I was there, a couple of laptops were stolen from HQ and the amount, and detail, of the laptops they had (location beacons, video footage from dozens of cameras, and RAT like tools on the laptops themselves) let them capture the crooks, recover the laptops, and identify the contractor who had assisted in access to the building in something like a few hours after they were reported stolen. I was really impressed by that, it certainly let anyone who was thinking about it know just how silly it would be to try to do something counter to the company&#x27;s interests.<p>But this comment, <i>&quot;At Google, Levandowski said, he was always chafing at the slow pace of progress. He finally left the company in January 2016, a month after Waymo alleges he had downloaded the technical files, and within days had formed a new company, 280 Systems, which Waymo claims became Otto.&quot;</i> I find perhaps the most interesting. I can say a lot of things about Google but &#x27;slow&#x27; is not something that generally came to mind. So that is surprising.<p>And then there is what this guy put at risk, there is this comment: <i>&quot;After covering his tracks, the lawsuit alleges, Levandowski pocketed a multimillion-dollar payout from Google and, using the secrets he had just stolen, promptly set up a new company, Otto, which was acquired shortly after by Uber for around $680m.&quot;</i><p>Presumably, as part of the acquisition he was signing that he wasn&#x27;t infringing on any previous agreements by joining and that he had rights to the material in question. And so if this goes against him, it seems Google will have cause to get back their payouts, and Uber will have cause to get back the $680M they paid too. And perhaps a huge chunk of that will come out of his own net worth. Maybe he squirreled away a bunch of cash that he thinks is out of reach of the IRS&#x2F;Courts but really?<p>Going to be interesting indeed.