Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing self-driving car technology

The judge is recommending a criminal probe be opened up into the technology exchange to Uber. Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, who quit the tech giant before merging his own startup with Uber, has been charged with stealing Google's self-driving car trade secrets, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday. Levandowski, 39, who served as the head of Uber's self-driving project, had been named in a 2017 lawsuit brought against Uber by Waymo, Google's former self-driving car unit, claiming that the popular ride-sharing app stole trade secrets from Google. That suit ended in a settlement of $245 million. At the time, federal judge William Alsup, who was overseeing the case, recommended criminal charges against Levandowski.