Even if they dont "use" anything he stole, 30 months of someone else's life in jail is a zero price to pay for Uber to get even a small amount of competitive knowledge. Even something like an internal calendar of expected timelines would be super useful and cant be unseen.
I'd argue the opposite that this was extremely expensive for Uber.
The legal nightmare which resulted a loss in 0.34% of equity and combined with having to throw away whatever they had[0] before as part of the deal with Google is not cheap at all.
Anecdotally, I have engineering friends on the Uber self driving team and they talk about how they are just starting over again and how far behind they are as a result of it.
This is definitely a path Uber would not choose to go down again in hind sight. All to say, Uber did pay a significant price for "30 months of someone else's life".
It's a gamble, though. Say you're Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, and you believe 3 things for sure: 1. Uber's completely doomed if self-driving cars show up and Uber doesn't own it, 2. Sexual harassment is a good idea, and 3. Uber's behind the top players in self-driving car research.
Say you believe that there's a 25% chance that this Google guy can get you to the front of the self-driving car race, and there's a 50% chance you'll get caught. Based on those 3 assumptions at the top, this is a worthwhile risk.
Sure, he wouldn't do it again with hindsight, both because it didn't work out and because his board fired him for creating a culture of sexual harassment, but the risk was probably worth it, strategically if not ethically.
The document was an open meeting minutes team spreadsheet. It’s how Google runs their teams, tabs like OKRs, Metrics, Weekly Updates, Progress, etc. Definitely a valuable document but trade secret? jail? Bankruptcy? Meanwhile, Waymo just raised 2.5Billion.
