San Francisco Sep 16 (IANS) Google has been reluctant about sharing how much it spends on self-driving technology but now the number -- over $1 billion -- has been accidentally revealed while reviewing documents in the ongoing legal tussle between Google s Waymo and Uber.
Google spent a whopping $1.1 billion on developing its self-driving software and hardware says the recent deposition of Shawn Bananzadeh a financial analyst at Waymo which was first reported by IEEE Spectrum s Mark Harris.
Bananzadeh was testifying in the ongoing Waymo s lawsuit against Uber which claims the ride-hailing company stole intellectual property and trade secrets to develop its own autonomous technology.
According to reports throughout Bananzadeh s deposition every dollar amount was redacted to protect Waymo s confidential commercial information.
Waymo has patented a technology that will make its self-driving cars soft on the outside if it comes across a situation where there is a possibility of an accident with a human.
Self-driving vehicles constantly communicate with one another to prevent crashes but this is the first time that an industry player came out with a solution to save pedestrians from accident.
Last month the legal tussle between ride-hailing company Uber and Google s parent company Alphabet escalated when the court allowed Uber to seek deposition of Alphabet CEO Larry Page for up to four hours.
Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber earlier in 2017 alleging that the stolen information became the technological basis for the company s self-driving cars.
--IANS
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