Alphabet is an investor in Uber through its venture capital arm GV, and from all appearances will continue to stay so.
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David Drummond, Alphabet’s chief legal officer, has stepped down from Uber’s board of directors, Recode has confirmed.
Drummond said he stepped down due to the overlap between the two companies, adding Google will continue to partner with Uber.
While Google may have pioneered the self-driving space years ago, the company’s autonomous auto arm has struggled to secure substantial partnerships with major automakers, save for a small deal with Fiat Chrysler.
Alphabet and Uber, the newspaper noted, “are in a race to develop and commercialize self-driving cars”.
The resignation announcement comes after a report from The Information earlier today claimed that Drummond had been prevented from attending board meetings at Uber because of concerns over a conflict of interest arising from potential competition between Google and Uber.
According to Fortune, Uber initially kept David Drummond out of board meetings, before the executive resigned his post after three years.
On Monday, Alphabet said Drummond, its senior vice president for corporate development, had recently quit the board of Uber. Uber recently said it plans to put semi-autonomous cars on the road by the end of this month to pick up passengers.
Google’s response to these sparks of Uber, was to in turn begin an early test which included an early extensive car-pooling test, using a navigation application called Waze. Google is working on making its self-driving auto experiments, which have been ongoing for years, into a viable business. The CEO of Otto, Anthony Levandowski will now head Uber’s self-driving department.
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Furthermore, Uber has been working on its own mapping system so as to diminish the necessity of Google Maps to perform their services as now Google Maps is used in all vehicles for the efficient transportation of civilians. In the a year ago there has been something of a Google-to-Uber exodus that included several high-profile Googlers. Uber pays Google to include its ride-hailing option in its maps so users can hail a ride from within the Google Maps app. General Motors has also invested US$500 million in ride-hailing company Lyft in a deal that could see them jointly developing a network of on-demand autonomous cars.
