Uber and Waymo abruptly settles lawsuit

In a surprising turn of events, Uber and Waymo have agreed to settle a self-driving trade secrets lawsuit on the fifth day of the case going to trial. Uber agreed to pay out 0.3 percent of its equity, which with the company’s US$72 billion valuation, puts that at over $245 million in stock. The company has also promised to work with Waymo’s parent company Alphabet to make sure none of Google’s confidential data will be used for Uber’s self-driving program (both in the hardware and software side).

The case began over a year ago when Waymo filed a suit against Uber accusing one of its former engineers, Anthony Levandowski, of downloading around 9.7GB of data or around 14,000 files before abruptly resigning from the company and later creating his own company called Ottomotto, which was acquired by Uber a few months later.

Source: Ars Technica

Alphabet executive chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt steps down from post

Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and current Alphabet executive chairman, is stepping down from his existing role in Google’s parent company but will transition into a new role as technical advisor and board member of Alphabet. In a statement, Schmidt says, “Larry [Page], Sergey [Brin], Sundar [Pichai] and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition. The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving.” He also adds that he’d like to continue work related to science and technology issues and philanthropy. Schidmt has worked in senior roles at Google since 2001 when he was brought on by Page and Brin to serve as Google’s chief executive.

An Alphabet company develops health-centric smartwatch

Google and Android Wear might be the public face of wearables for Alphabet. But there’s another Alphabet division working in the wearables space. The company called Verily announced its new smartwatch called Study Watch. It’ll serve as a regular watch to users but it has more functions beyond that. Verily’s main business is developing tools for doctors to collect patient data and that’s what the Study Watch does.

There are a number of sensors in the wearable that collects information such as a person’s heart rate, inertial movements, and electrodermal activity. This data will be collected and encrypted in the device itself for security purposes and will then be uploaded to Verily’s cloud servers for processing via machine learning. This watch can help identify patterns in things like the progression of Parkinson’s disease or give doctors a baseline level of health to see how a person goes from healthy to sick. Verily didn’t too much release information but they did say it could last a week on a single charge. But don’t expect this to come out and be sold to the general public.

Source: Android Authority

Alphabet’s Waymo in talks with Honda regarding self-driving car tech

After Google recently spun out its self-driving car division into Waymo, it looks like the new Alphabet company is trying to strike a big deal. Honda announced it is entering talks with Waymo on integrating autonomous vehicle tech into its cars. The discussion is still in its very early stages but Honda is proposing to give Waymo modified vehicles to help speed the process along. The new announcement isn’t meant to derail Honda’s own automated driving plans, which it intends to have self-driving cars on the road by 2020, but will be considered a “different technological approach.” If it does push through though, this would help legitimize Waymo further as a viable option for manufacturers who just plan to integrate an established self-driving platform over creating their own version.

Source: Engadget