Former Google engineer gets 18 months in prison for stealing Google's self-driving car technology
Anthony Levandowski is the former Google engineer whose stealing of Google’s self-driving car technology got him a ticket to an 18 month stay in the federal penitentiary and over $850,000 in fines.
The over $850,000 in fines includes the $756,499 that Levandowski has to pay back to Waymo for the money the company forked out to lawyers to fight the case and a $95,000 fine for stealing the company’s self-driving car technology secrets.
Some of y’all may be wondering, “What the heck is a Waymo and what the heck does it have to do with this?!” Waymo is a spin off company from a project that Anthony Levandowski was working on for Google back in 2007. The now felon/former Google engineer got himself in this pickle of a mess after he decided to take Google’s self-driving car technology, which Waymo was using, and use it to build up his self-driving trucking business, Otto.
Let Anthony Levandowski tell it, Waymo wouldn’t exist if he didn’t use his brains to develop the technology for a self-driving car. Therefore, what Google and Waymo are calling their property, is really Anthony Levandowski’s property. And he can do whatever he wants with his property, including selling it to Uber for over $600 million.
The Google and Waymo folks don’t see it that way, though. They see Anthony Levandowski’s making over $600 million off the self-driving technology that the Google folks paid him to use his brain power to develop technology for Waymo as evidence of stealing.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup and an arbitration court in San Francisco, California, agree with Google and Waymo. That’s why the federal judge sentenced Anthony Levandowski to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay over $850,000 in fines. The arbitration court ordered Anthony Levandowski to pay Google $179 million which, ironically, took up most of the bonus Anthony Levandowski got before he took the door marked exit from Google.
Having said all of that, Anthony Levandowski got off lite for all of that stealing he did. Now, I know he accepted a plea deal which contributed to his lite sentence. But, that still doesn’t negate the fact that the 18 month prison sentence is a far cry away from the 10 years in prison Anthony Levandowski would’ve faced and the $250,000, instead of the $95,000, fine he would’ve paid if he had been convicted by a jury of his peers.
The only thing I get out of all of this is that the feds and the judge accepted Anthony Levandowski’s plea deal because of his relationship with former Google CEO Larry Page, and the embarrassment Google would’ve suffered if it had come out how a mega tech giant got stiffed by one of its star engineers who was able to steal 14,000 files, right from up under the mega tech giant’s nose, and then sell those files to its competitor, Uber, for a whopping $600 million plus without Google every knowing.
The over $850,000 in fines includes the $756,499 that Levandowski has to pay back to Waymo for the money the company forked out to lawyers to fight the case and a $95,000 fine for stealing the company’s self-driving car technology secrets.
Some of y’all may be wondering, “What the heck is a Waymo and what the heck does it have to do with this?!” Waymo is a spin off company from a project that Anthony Levandowski was working on for Google back in 2007. The now felon/former Google engineer got himself in this pickle of a mess after he decided to take Google’s self-driving car technology, which Waymo was using, and use it to build up his self-driving trucking business, Otto.
Let Anthony Levandowski tell it, Waymo wouldn’t exist if he didn’t use his brains to develop the technology for a self-driving car. Therefore, what Google and Waymo are calling their property, is really Anthony Levandowski’s property. And he can do whatever he wants with his property, including selling it to Uber for over $600 million.
The Google and Waymo folks don’t see it that way, though. They see Anthony Levandowski’s making over $600 million off the self-driving technology that the Google folks paid him to use his brain power to develop technology for Waymo as evidence of stealing.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup and an arbitration court in San Francisco, California, agree with Google and Waymo. That’s why the federal judge sentenced Anthony Levandowski to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay over $850,000 in fines. The arbitration court ordered Anthony Levandowski to pay Google $179 million which, ironically, took up most of the bonus Anthony Levandowski got before he took the door marked exit from Google.
Having said all of that, Anthony Levandowski got off lite for all of that stealing he did. Now, I know he accepted a plea deal which contributed to his lite sentence. But, that still doesn’t negate the fact that the 18 month prison sentence is a far cry away from the 10 years in prison Anthony Levandowski would’ve faced and the $250,000, instead of the $95,000, fine he would’ve paid if he had been convicted by a jury of his peers.
The only thing I get out of all of this is that the feds and the judge accepted Anthony Levandowski’s plea deal because of his relationship with former Google CEO Larry Page, and the embarrassment Google would’ve suffered if it had come out how a mega tech giant got stiffed by one of its star engineers who was able to steal 14,000 files, right from up under the mega tech giant’s nose, and then sell those files to its competitor, Uber, for a whopping $600 million plus without Google every knowing.
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