Why would you think this stuff wasn't in writing? Do you think the investigation OAI did into the board's actions was just relayed orally?[1] That the board's discussions where all done in conference calls and not in e-mail? Do you think that this documentation gets routinely released to the public or even employees? Before you throw around accusations of incompetence, you should probably have some shred of evidence. This is the type of stuff that is typically considered extremely confidential and even now they say they are unable to reveal details. Why do you think that is? What is preventing them from doing something they apparently want to? Legal agreements such as NDAs, the same ones that would have prevented them from going public with details last years.
The board's mistake was not figuring out a way to go public with their case against Sam when or before they fired him. They obviously misjudged how he would respond. But even there we don't know the full context and constraints they were under. Hopefully, one of them will answer that question of why they didn't at some point, but until we know more, we would be wise to reserve judgement.
Yes, it really went that deep. But only if you pinky swore to only use that data to improve your app and then delete it! Facebook changed their API in 2014 and removed that ability, allowing companies to only see the profiles of friends that already had the same app (which the developer already had access to anyway). They claimed it was for user privacy, but really they realized they were giving away the crown jewels and allowing other companies to recreate large swaths of their social graph.
Not really. The EPA has done this for decades, specifically for Superfund sites. When you can, it's more efficient to have bad actors pay for their bad acts rather than burdening an industry as a whole.
I was joking about Alsup allowing Uber's pretrial malfeasance to be disclosed to the jury. But the quotes in this Ars Technica article[0] make me wonder.
"My normal inclination is, let’s decide the case on the merits but I’ve never seen a case where there are so many bad things like Uber has done."
"It looks like you covered [the Jacobs letter] up, refused to turn it over to the lawyers that were most involved in the case, [and] to me, for reasons that are inexplicable."
It sounds like Alsup is split on the Jacobs letter because he might be a "disgruntled employee who sees the handwriting on the wall". And he really wanted to know why Jacobs' lawyer got $3m for writing a letter. Alsup knows something doesn't smell right about the Jacobs settlement.
If it is allowed...
Only in @kateconger's replies[0], but it appears Alsup is still deciding whether he'll allow the Jacobs letter to be admitted as evidence for the jury. Excluding a letter alleging Uber stole Waymo trade secrets would be a big blow to Waymo. Especially one that Uber paid $7.5m to suppress. There isn't going to be a smoking gun, so Waymo has to make the case that Uber probably stole Waymo trade secrets because they've acted like they probably did.
Oh, now we know how the USA got it: https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/935912822478794752. Uber "voluntarily disclosed the Jacobs letter" because Jacobs threatened to involuntarily disclose it. However, Uber tried to hide it in this case (despite it/Jacobs mentioning Waymo); the USA gave it to Judge Alsup because he had initially recommended the case for criminal investigation and they thought he might find it relevant in his trial. At this point, Uber has lied so consistently it seems like they should forfeit their opportunity to offer testimony. I wonder if the judge will allow any of this to be brought up with the jury.
I didn't say the tweet I referenced was one she was mistaken about. I said it had an interesting tidbit that I had not otherwise seen reported. For ones she got wrong, see https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935599952515837952 and https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935541698284863488. The judge was clearly upset at Uber's lawyers, not those of Waymo. Mistakes happen, but it made her stream more confusing than it should have been, because you had to think harder about each reference to either company. @KateConger's stream was much clearer, but she didn't mention the performance review testimony.
Unfortunately, @CSaid mistakenly used Waymo instead of Uber in a few places, but she did have an interesting tidbit I haven't seen in any of the subsequent articles[0]: the former employee of Uber claimed that he was reprimanded in a performance review and then demoted for "not protecting more info from discovery." How is that not a huge deal?
Judge Alsup got the letter because the US Attorney's office passed it along to him. I haven't seen anything about how the US Attorney obtained it, but presumably criminal prosecution and subpoenas provide a greater disincentive to lying than civil suits. Also, there were two parties who would have had this letter: Uber and the lawyer(s) who wrote the letter on behalf of the former Uber employee. Unlike Uber, those attorneys would have little incentive to be anything but transparent.
Uber supporters often seem to think that the only alternative to an easy to use ride hailing app is driving drunk and killing someone. It would take some careful research to correlate Uber rides to drunk driving deaths and I have yet to see someone attempt it.
The board's mistake was not figuring out a way to go public with their case against Sam when or before they fired him. They obviously misjudged how he would respond. But even there we don't know the full context and constraints they were under. Hopefully, one of them will answer that question of why they didn't at some point, but until we know more, we would be wise to reserve judgement.
[1] https://archive.is/wbwC2