I'm not sure I understand, are you saying this is some tit-for-tat move after Uber acquired Otto? Sounds a bit Machiavellian even for Uber and Google. Would love to hear the actual back story if that is the case.
Absolutely not saying that. You're trying to portrait him as some kind of spy, waiting to see if Uber turned out to be a good idea to get out of the board. What I'm saying is you can only construct an argument like that by omitting the obvious reason he stepped out.
Not a spy, just not aligned well with the companies they partner with. Google is doing its level best to find additional markets it can expand into. And it has a history of expanding into the markets of people that it invests in. Your typical VC won't generally invest in a second startup going after the same market as one they are already invested in, and Google Ventures is nominally "separate" from Google, but they seem to jump in when without their partner from time to time. Once, maybe twice, can be a fluke but one of the things startups always worry about is Google (or Apple or Microsoft or Facebook) jumping into their space with infinite marketing dollars and hundreds of idle staff members. One could be forgiven to think that if they were investing in you they wouldn't do that, but this sort of behavior should make startups think long and hard about taking a GV deal over an investor who wants them to be successful.
I wonder if that impacts GV's ability to participate in future deals. It seems like it should but business can be funny that way.
Google and Uber started in different places, and therefore there didn't seem to be a conflict 5-10 years ago. i.e. Google = fully autonomous car research; Uber = practical service for transportation.
However, as they both iterate and approach their logical local-optimums they find more and more that there is actual competition. i.e. Uber and also Google = a service "driven by" a fully autonomous car fleet.
