There are many companies who are working on self-driving cars at the moment, and for the most part it seems like everyone is competing with each other. In fact a recent legal dispute between Uber and Google is a perfect example of that, although it seems that during the legal proceedings, emails revealed that Uber had actually wanted to work with Google.According to the emails, it suggests that Uber’s then-CEO Travis Kalanick had his suspicions that Google was planning on moving into the ride-sharing service using their self-driving cars, and an email revealed that he was interested in speaking with Google on how to best proceed, possibly through a partnership.
The email reads, “A meeting with Larry could calm this down if it’s not true but he has been avoiding any meeting with me since last fall. Without any dialogue we get pushed into the assumption that Google is competing in the short term and has probably been planning to do so for quite a bit longer than has been let on. I hope I’m wrong here, just need to do a meeting with Larry ASAP to get clarity and a mutual understanding of how to do a proper partnership here.”
It also revealed that David Drummond, Google’s head of business, believed in such a partnership. However exactly what happened that led to this partnership not working out is unclear, but a statement sent to Business Insider by an Uber spokesperson suggests that the company believes that the lawsuit could actually be motivated by Google trying to slow the competition down, rather than the downloading of confidential files. Either way we suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out.
Filed in . Read more about Google, Legal, Self-Driving Cars and Uber.