Uber settles with Waymo on self-driving

Uber and Waymo have reached a settlement over claims Uber stole trade secrets from the self-driving company.

As part of the agreement, Uber is giving a 0.34% Uber stake to Waymo, worth approximately $245m (£177m).

Uber has also agreed not to use Waymo's technology in its self-driving cars, though it maintains it never did.

Uber's chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, expressed "regret" over the way his company had handled the issue.

In a statement, he said to Waymo: "While we won’t agree on everything going forward, we agree that Uber’s acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently."

Otto was a self-driving trucking company co-founded by former Google employee Anthony Levandowski. It was acquired by Uber for $650m in 2016.

The deal comes after four days in court in which former chief executive Travis Kalanick took the stand.

He was accused of orchestrating a plan to steal more than 14,000 confidential files from Waymo when the firm was still part of Google. It is now owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.

"We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology," a Waymo spokesman said on Friday.

"This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software."

The content on this page is excerpted from an article entitled "Uber settles with Waymo on self-driving" published in this link. Article written by Dave Lee for BBC.