Uber engineer Levandowski, accused of massive theft from Google, has been fired

Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski, VP of engineering at Uber, speaking to reporters at the Uber Advanced Technologies Center on September 13, 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (credit: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)

The Uber engineer at the center of the company's litigation with Waymo, Anthony Levandowski, has been fired.

Levandowski's termination was made clear in an internal e-mail and reported earlier today by The New York Times. An Uber spokesperson confirmed the news to Ars Technica.

Google's self-driving car division, Waymo, sued Uber in February, claiming that Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 files while he was a Google employee, including trade secrets. Uber has not denied that Levandowski may have taken files but maintains that its self-driving car technology was built independently from the ground up. The company says Google's files didn't make their way to Uber.

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