Quest to dominate self-driving cars is at the heart of Waymo v. Uber trial

Enlarge / A customized Waymo minivan being shown off at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. (credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)

This story has everything: a cutthroat startup using cloak-and-dagger tactics going up against a corporate giant, a now-dismissed star engineer accused of stealing thousands of crucial files, cutting-edge Silicon Valley technology, and a whipsmart, no-nonsense, tech-savvy judge.

This year's hottest tech-related trial is Waymo v. Uber. At 7:30am PT Monday, what began as a trade secrets lawsuit back in February 2017 is set to open in federal court in San Francisco, just blocks from Uber headquarters.

On one side is Waymo, the self-driving car division of Alphabet, Google's parent company. Its lawyers accused Uber of effectively stealing its secret sauce when the ridesharing company hired away a top engineer who had taken 14,000 internal files without authorization before leaving Google.

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