Google, Yahoo!, Apple Targeted In DoJ Antitrust Probe 166
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post:
"The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review. The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The sources said the review includes other tech companies and is 'industry-wide.' By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly, antitrust experts said. ... Obama's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Christine Varney, has said she plans to look at the network effects of high-tech companies and how their grasp on markets has cut out competitors and hurt consumers."
Re:Apparently the Obama administration doesn't (Score:1, Interesting)
But if you want to keep Diluting yourself into "hope and change" then don't mind me, go right ahead.
Re:antitrust, et al. (Score:2, Interesting)
If I'm employed by Google and seeking a job at Apple, that agreement is interfering with my negotiations.
If this is true, they are conducting discussions about employment with each other without the affected parties being represented.
If it were two companies conspiring against a third company instead of a just a group of anonymous potential employees, the lawsuits would be measured in the billions.
Re:Maybe not (Score:1, Interesting)
If you worked for Google for a number of years and had an intimate knowledge of how their searching algorithm worked, would the brass really want you going to Yahoo with that knowledge being current?
That is why Non-Disclosure Agreements exist. I imagine that Google could easily determine whether a leak on their proprietary technology occurred, and they could take appropriate action if it did.
The difference between an NDA and a Non-Compete speaks to a fundamental difference in philosophy in law/contract enforcement. The NDA, at its most ideal, is supposed to establish that Google's trade secrets are their property, and sharing them with Yahoo constitutes theft. There is nothing in the contract to stop the employee from working at Yahoo, but if trade secrets are leaked there will be consequences. However, a Non-Compete is usually tacked onto this contract and it says, "not only can you not share trade secrets, but we are placing additional constraints on what you (otherwise legally) can do based on what we think would lead up to this (illegal) act."
Let's extrapolate that to law enforcement. We as a society agree on acts that are, without question, illegal. However, a certain number of perfectly legal actions must normally take place before the execution of this legal act. For example, in order to shoot somebody, it is necessary to have a gun. Owning a gun is perfectly legal and, depending on who you talk to, is a natural right enumerated in the Constitution. Does it make sense that legislators have placed restrictions on owning a gun, quite possibly in opposition of the Second Amendment?
For those here who are more focused on the First and Fourth Amendments (though you should really care about all of them) here's another example. A terrorist is planning an attack on a building; a clearly illegal and horrible act. To maximize damage, a plan must be created; this would include surveying the structure of the building. A way to do that is to take pictures, once again perfectly legal in theory. So, certain people in authority got the bright idea to ban taking pictures of public buildings in order to (IMO ineffectively) prevent an attack.
This may seem to be completely off-topic to this part of the conversation (NDAs and non-competes) but it really is not. They all bring up a fundamental question in how far we should go in preventing blatantly evil crimes from occurring. If we make so-called "steps to an illegal act" into crimes, how far should we go in prevent these "crimes" from occurring? I think that the concept of a non-compete shows that we've gone too far, and the courts seem to agree with that notion. No, I am not advocating a completely reactive scenario (i.e., don't bother doing anything until the damage is done) but there has to be a better balance than what we have now.
Re:antitrust, et al. (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, but they're somewhat better, for now (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has two main differences, I think, for now:
1. They're still largely controlled by some fairly idealistic folks, who are now so filthy rich that they aren't that worried about making even more money, so much as using their multi-billion-dollar playground to incubate things they think of as cool. As long as their playground continues making significant profit margins, the third-party investors will probably let them do this.
2. In many of their market segments, their self-interest isn't as badly aligned with openness as it is for some large companies. With Google's resources, they can afford to make open protocols, avoid a walled-garden approach and allow people to move their data in/out, etc., because they're banking on the competitive advantage of, "go ahead, just try to duplicate this... here, we'll even give you the code and the APIs, now good luck coming up with and setting up / maintaining that much computing power for a lower price than it costs us". This is actually a positive marketing tool in some areas, because a few large companies have gotten burned with data locked into proprietary formats from now-defunct companies, so "we can get our data back out of this thing, right?" is something even companies that don't care about open source are asking these days.
I agree with you that it's quite possible these will change. If its profit margins start going down, investors will start demanding more "normal corporation" type of stuff to try to prop them up, and the founders and their lieutenants will no longer have complete freedom to do what they'd like. If people seem like they are starting to move off some of the services, Google will come under investor pressure to try to lock them in, or at least to no longer be so nice about helping customers avoid lock-in.