The Federal Trade Commission and Uber announced a settlement today which allows the FTC two decades of privacy and security audits. This announcement is the next step in Uber settling disputes with the FTC - the second settlement they've made this year. In January of this year, Uber agreed to a settlement of $20-million for exaggerating potential earnings in effort to draw in drivers.
A new study has shed light on what may turn out to be a growing trend: lower car ownership in cities where ridesharing services are available. Though the figures are still in their infancy at the moment, a study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute noted that both car usage and car ownership increased once Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin, Texas.
Uber has built in-app messaging into its ride-hailing app, allowing users to chat with their drivers without SMS, and promising more safety on the road as a result. The update, which is being pushed out to the Uber app from today, shifts conversations that would until now have been held over phone calls or text messages to a new, in-app chat client. For Uber drivers, meanwhile, it should make for an easier way to respond to the next ride while still keeping attention on the road.
As much of a hassle as it is for a rider who forgets something in an Uber car, the annoyance is double for the driver who has to waste time returning it...time that could otherwise be spent earning money, or at the least, not wasting gas due to someone's simple mistake. Drivers have been vocal about this and Uber is finally listening. As a result, you're going to have to pay from now on to get your forgotten items back.
Uber announced today that they'd be taking a step up in the world by buying up a bunch of Russia's Google - Yandex. If you'll take a look at Yandex on the web, it'll become clear rather quickly what they're in a position to do. They've got all the bases covered - or nearly all the bases covered - for a Russia-based do-everything company of which Uber now owns a significant portion.
Waymo has dropped all but one of the patent infringement claims it's challenging Uber over in court, as the two companies fight over self-driving car tech. The Alphabet-owned company had accused Uber of infringing on four different patents related to autonomous driving, filing a lawsuit back in February. According to Waymo, its former employee Anthony Levandowski had stolen a cache of technical documents about the company's developments and taken them to set up Otto, a self-driving vehicle startup later acquired by Uber.
Uber has a new fleet of autonomous trucks, deploying a new version of self-driving hardware and sensors that won't be impacted by the ongoing legal battle with Alphabet's Waymo. Though the company may be best-known for its passenger ridesharing service - or, more recently, most infamously for its controversial former CEO - Uber has also been working on modernizing haulage, too. That has centered on the Otto autonomous trucks project, another aspect of the company which Uber took over after it acquired Otto last year.
There are two primary reasons you may need to order someone else an Uber ride: they don't have a smartphone or they're too incapacitated (read: drunk) to do it themselves. In that case, you can use your own phone to order them a ride, but it's a hassle and not one that many people enjoy. Here to fix that is Uber itself, which has rolled out a feature greatly enhancing the ordering-a-friend-a-car experience.
The writing has been on the wall for months now, so it should really surprise no one that Uber's controversial CEO is stepping down. Of course, that doesn't mean he's completely out of picture, as he still serves on the company's board. It, however, also doesn't translate to an immediate recovery for the embattled ride hailing service, whose woes, not to mention lawsuits, will proceed even without Kalanick at the helm.
Uber has fired Anthony Levandowski, the controversial vice president of technology who had until recently been leading the ride-sharing firm's autonomous car business. Levandowski was one of Uber's highest-profile talent grabs, joining the company after it acquired his startup, Otto, in July 2016. That prompted a lawsuit from Alphabet's self-driving car company Waymo, accusing the engineer of stealing tech secrets.
As the ongoing trade secrets lawsuit between Google's Waymo and Uber continues to heat up, the ride-sharing company has threatened to fire one of its top engineers if he doesn't cooperate with court orders. Anthony Levandowski is currently an employee on Uber's self-driving car efforts, but before that he was a technology lead at Waymo, similarly developing autonomous vehicle tech. Now he's at the center of the lawsuit and is being accused of stealing confidential information and taking it with him to Uber.
Uber has announced a new app integration with Transit, enabling it to offer transportation options for public transport systems like local trains and buses. The idea here is that if you're in the city and taking an Uber car somewhere, you're probably only going to use it for part of your overall trip, which may include something like using an Uber to get from your home to the train station, then taking the train for the longest portion of the trip.
