Alarm Didn’t Ring at Waymo Before Uber Was Sued for Theft
- Alphabet engineer who investigated called data ‘low-value’
- Expert says new evidence won’t be enough to derail lawsuit
The Waymo driverless car is displayed during a Google event Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, in San Francisco. The self-driving car project that Google started seven years ago has grown into a company called Waymo.
Photographer: Eric Risberg/AP PhotoThis article is for subscribers only.
Some of the allegedly stolen information in Waymo’s trade-secrets case against Uber Technologies Inc. may not have been so precious after all, according to the Alphabet Inc. unit’s own engineer.
“Low-value” was the engineer’s assessment while investigating the downloading of files by driverless car executive Anthony Levandowski four months before Waymo called him a traitor in a high-stakes lawsuit headed to trial next month.