"An old man," "sluggish," "an old fuddy-duddy" – those are some of the choice terms that Brian Reid, an experienced engineer, alleges that his former colleagues at Google used to describe him before he was fired at age 54.

The California Supreme Court in San Francisco will hear Reid's age discrimination lawsuit Wednesday, in which he charges that he's owed tens of millions of dollars in lost stock options. Hired in 2002, Reid was fired after one year and 10 months with the the search engine. Google deemed him not a good "cultural fit" for the company.

Reid isn't just any engineer. As a young man, he actually worked on Apollo 17. As a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon, he was on the team that helped define the e-mail standard used on the Internet. At Digital Equipment Corporation, he helped create the first Internet firewall. At AltaVista, he helped develop one of the first Internet search engines. Learn more about his distinguished career here.

At the time Reid worked for Google, only 30 of its 1,900 employees were over the age of 40, according to Fast Company. Google officials refused to tell the San Jose Mercury News the number of workers it has now has who are over 50 years old, but asserted that there are plenty of older workers there who thrive. They also pointed out that the manager who fired Reid was 55 years old. 

The California Supreme Court won't be considering the merits of Reid's age discrimination case today. Rather, it will consider how pertinent "stray remarks," like the ones that Reid claims to have overheard his colleagues make about him, are to the outcome of employment lawsuits.

The Supreme Court will rule within 90 days on the case. Reid now works at the Internet Systems Consortium in Redwood City.