That is legitimate, but that's not the point here. The point is Uber's hubris. A hubris very useful in pumping up its stock price ahead of an IPO. If they had quietly planned to license it from the get-go, nobody would have mentioned it.

Uber literally killed people trying to develop their own first. Tesla continues to do so. I wish everyone would license Waymo instead.

Any reason to prefer Waymo over Cruise? I saw an driverless Cruise taxi in SF just the other day. And are they any other competitors still in this space worth watching?

They had the Uber ATG group - they laid everyone off and gave up on their AV research. How is that cynical? That's a fact.