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Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool
A two-count lawsuit filed by Chicago company LimitNone alleges that Google misappropriated trade secrets and violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws when it developed "Google Email Uploader" which competes with LimitNone's "gMove" application.
"Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil' but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,'" said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement.
The lawsuit was filed by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system.
Don't be first post.
.... says that the majority of posts will be about which side is screwing who despite no one on Slashdot having any clue about what happened at the meetings between the two companies.
Check back later for the results of the prediction.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I mean it only makes sense that the large company employing the best engineers in the world would risk everything to steal a product they could write in a day, right?
stuff |
What article? Business wire is a press release service. The "article" authors are listed at the bottom: Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the lawyers who are suing google.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Perhaps I should sue them for selling a product that did what the Perl script I wrote to import ten years' worth of archives into GMail did several months before the beta was even open to anyone but friends and family of people at Google.
You know, because its really a non-obvious idea.
You really should have read the article. If what's said in the article is even partially true, it sure looks like Google acted in a pretty sleazy fashion. Apparently they were willing to boost this company's product until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free. It's like Netscape/IE all over again.
If even half of their claims are founded in truth then this is a worthy lawsuit and Google acted in an 'evil' manner. I'll clue you in on something: not all lawsuits are bad. The mechanism exists for a reason.
Then again at least you admitted that you are totally uninformed on the subject since you didn't read the (short) article.
Wait, you think Slashdot editors actually read the article? I'd say "you must be new here", but then somebody with a 4-digit UID would be legally obligated to come over and bitch-slap me.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
A successful lawsuit against Google could be like the small pebble that causes a landslide.
$1B is a ridiculous amount of money for this lawsuit, but even at $10M, a successful suit would bring more lawsuits out of the woodwork.
And I'm willing to bet that once it happened, Microsoft would be more than happy to finance as many as possible.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Obviously, the product is interesting if Google supposedly wanted to steal it.
Full Tilt
*slap*
You're welcome.
I'm not a doctor but I can't see why people can't just grow back their arms when an alligator eats it off.
I mean lizards grow back tails all the time.
I don't see what the big problem is.
50 mil * $19 = $950 million
I have to admit if the allegations are true then Google probably has one of the best Marketing/PR departments in the world.
I've been in the IT industry for a long time and I can still remember Microsoft's public image was similar many, many years ago! (anyone remember a small company called 'Stac'?) and it's now happening again, same 'strategy' - different company!
Initially I was skeptical when I started reading the article (I know, I know I have just broken a Slashdot cardinal rule) when I read this:
"..the potential for 50 million users - was "just too big to come from someone else" and that "this is how Google operates.."
quoted from Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program
Moral of the story?
It's ok to be a 'partner' to a large company as long as your product is not *too* popular or successful.
Anyone partnering with a large company should learn lessons from this - remember a large companie's main responsibility is to it's shareholders - they are the people who want a return on thier investment and usually at any cost!
I find it rather ridiculous that LimitNone actually believes that an Email client migration product is such an advanced piece of software that Google with its legions of developers and mounds of cash couldn't cook one up on its own. The article cites that LimitNone claims that the 'gMove' application was a trade secret..it wasn't even patented. This is another huge whiner case. This company has a product that has a snowball's chance in hell of competing with a 'free' Google product, yet they still expect that they are somehow entitled to money for it because Google went back on its word (not contractually..just its "word").
I was sitting in on a product development meeting a few months back and the discussion came up on how to be viable in today's market. One of the big questions in online application entrepeneuring is: How can we remain viable against companies like Google?.. Companies like Google that can cook up the same product with all the same features in a fraction of the time. It seems that if LimitNone had applied some common sense to its product lines, it wouldn't run into the problem of oh, say, Google extending the functionality of one of its already existing applications. Whoops.
Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.
This is ust another case of litigation over innovation. I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?
Product Analyst: "Look at this gMove product, they are selling hundreds, maybe even thousands of copies. They're making a lot of money! We should do something about it."
VP of Development: "Okay, let's develop our own."
Accountant: "How much should we charge for it?"
Product Analyst: "Well, the makers of gMove believe that they could sell 50 million copies for $29.99- that's like 1 billion dollars!" (said while holding pinky finger to mouth, of course)
VP of Sales: "We could probably sell even more copies if it was cheaper"
Accountant steps out to go to the bathroom.
Product Analyst: "Imagine how many copies we could sell if it was free!!"
VP of Development: "Okay, let's do it! That'll really show 'em!"
$1B is a ridiculous amount of money for this lawsuit, but even at $10M, a successful suit would bring more lawsuits out of the woodwork.
If it were only $10 million, Google would just take it out of their toilet paper and soft drink budget and forget about it and it would be business as usual: $10 million is nothing to a big monster mega-corp and it doesn't get any headlines like a BILLION DOLLAR award does. In other words, it only cost $10 million, shit! Let's do it again. Paying off a $10 million lawsuit is much cheaper than developing, marketing, researching it ourselves!
With a billion dollar penalty, it gets them thinking that maybe they shouldn't continue on this path.
1. It's press release by the plaintiff's lawyers.
2. "until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free." WTF? That doesn't even make sense. We could make a fortune if we had this product, lets give it away for free and we'll all be rich!!! No. I'm not sure if Google cares _how_ the conversion is done, just that the users come to Google at some point in the transaction. A converter, while convenient if it's free, is just as valuable if somebody else sells it...as long as it it used.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Yes, it's a press release, which is why I said "if it's even partially true", which it may not be.
As for what Google gets out of it, if they want people to use a converter obviously giving it away for free will result in a far higher adoption rate. They may also have wanted to add it as a free feature of their Premium service to make that service more attractive to potential customers.
The whole thing could be frivolous, but if the facts are as stated in the article (press release), then it's a sleazy thing for Google to do.
My blog
Sure, a smile and a handshake is fine if you're doing a $300 quick job with a repeat customer, but if a billion dollars is on the line there needs to be paperwork. Now, if it is reasonable to presume that there wasn't much to be made on this at the beginning, then it is also reasonable to believe the change of heart on the part of Google is based on "new" information as to the viability of the product. If there are trade secrets involved, there should (must?) be an NDA, or it's not really a trade secret. And where do consumers come in this (i.e. the consumer fraud complaint)? It sounds like the consumers are going to make out to the tune of $29 per user.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sleazy? Maybe. That depends on the he-said she-said details of the "I promise I won't" allegations. The only thing that matters is in the third to last paragraph of the press release:
Microsoft proved you can't steal look and feel (from Apple, anyway). Stealing functionality sounds like reverse engineering to me.I think it comes down to a quote from Richard Marx:
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Offtopic, but that "old-lady vs McDonalds" lawsuit was actually valid, though it was taken by the tort-reform people and manipulated to seem like a silly lawsuit.
McDonalds had been warned several times by the FDA to lower the temperature of their coffee, as several people each year were severely burned by it. The woman was in the passenger seat, her son was driving, and they had pulled off to the side of the drive-thru so she could put sugar in the coffee. When opening the lid, the cup slipped and spilled on to her lap.
The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.
She then contacted McDonalds, explaining the situation to them, and asked them to reimburse part of her medical bills (for burn treatment and skin grafts). They offered her $500. Since her bills were quickly climbing into the high tens of thousands of dollars, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses.
It was the jury that decided medical expenses were not enough, and awarded her punitive damages (to punish McDonalds) totaling one day's revenue in coffee sales. McDonalds appealed the decision, and an appellate judge overturned the punitive damages. She ended up getting somewhere around $200,000, which barely covered her medical expenses up to that point.
Sorry, that was very off topic, but that case is misused as an example for tort reform so often I felt it needed to be stated. There are other ridiculous cases, sure, but that really isn't one of them. More info here.
As you point out, Google's profit interest is in more migrations from Outlook. That means that anyone offering a Outloog migration tool is to Google's good. However, someone offering a converter for $$$ raises a barrier: some people won't pay for a converter; if they can't migrate for free they won't use Gmail. How do you overcome that barrier? Offer a converter for free. Yeah, the guys trying to sell their converter get shafted. But Google wins by getting more users who migrate off of Outlook.
That's the motivation point you seem to be neglecting. That's the ??? before "Profit!". In your words, that's WTF.
And yeah, I know, that's the story according to the plaintiff's legal team. We've unofficially heard one side of the story. (Yeah, unofficially. As you point out, it's a press release, not the actual filings.) So, there's obviously a lot more story to come. I hope Groklaw follows this one.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Suing someone else for your own stupid mistakes seems really... well, stupid. But I guess that's the name of the game these days.
As with everyone else here, I have no idea what actually went on in the meetings between Google and this company. However, their lawyers description of events goes something like this:
- Google launches service
- Google notices small company's product complements service
- Google aggressively promotes company's product
- Google starts providing similar product as part of service
It sounds to me like this is a "sour grapes" lawsuit. The company likely benefited tremendously from Google's promotion of it's product, and was probably expecting Google to simply buy them out and integrate the product. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Google developed an in-house solution, making their product redundant.
To put in traditional terms, if I ran a car company, and I promoted a certain brand of GPS in my dealerships, could that GPS company sue me once I started to integrate GPS systems into my vehicles?
Now, there may be many things we don't know, but when the plaintiffs lawyer makes things sound like this, it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the merit of this lawsuit.
~$1B == 50,000,000 users * $19 per user.
50,000,000 users == the number of potential users, according to the "Google Exec" in the press release.
$19 per user == the price the plaintiff was going to sell the product for.
CNET is also covering this at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html
It provides additional details, including: "And in May 2008, Google changed its user interface, breaking gMove compatibility and forcing the company to provide customer refunds."
captcha: nonzero (that's almost like LimitNone)
TFA does not say there was a "non-compete" agreement which would be crazy to agree to, since in fact this is easy to duplicate. It talks vaguely of "assurances". The CEO claims their technology was "stolen" but then the article says a competing product was released, not theirs.
Looks like they had the benefit of big-time promotion *for almost a year* before Google had anything else to show. They made quite a bit of money they wouldn't have otherwise I am sorry... sounds like someone was hoping for a payday and is just angry now.
KD&W are not suing Google.
LimitNone is suing Google, and have retained KD&W as counsel.
I understand that many slashdotters (and people in general) have a distrust/dislike/hatred of lawyers, but is an important distinction to make.
KD&W was counsel for the other lawsuit mentioned in the summary, but they did not in fact sue Google. KD&W is used in a lot of IP/trade secret cases because they are good at it, particularly with respect to software. They have knowledge and they have experience.
Not that I'm defending lawyers in general here (forgot to wear my asbestos undergarments today), but when I use a paring knife to stab someone, do you get mad at the knife or do you get mad at me?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They contribute so much to our free economy!
When I got divorced, I was damned glad I had a good lwayer. When I subsequently filed bankrupcy, again I was glad I had a good lawyer.
When my then-wife ("Evil-X" for those of you who have seen the Paxil Diaries) was hit by a city truck that ran a red light, well, her lawyer sucked but the medical bills got paid. I was glad she hired the same guy for the divorce.
When your incompetent doctor who has lost his license in seven states (but there's no way for you to know that) leaves a sponge in your gut, you are going to need a good lawyer.
I guess your idea of a "free economy" is allowing me to steal from your store.
If you have injury and disease, you're going to need doctors. If you have computers, you are going to need programers. If you are going to have engines, you are going to need engineers. If you are going to have laws, you are going to need lawyers.
BTW, IANAL.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm sure it was a piece of cake to write. Microsoft's proprietary API's and file formats are all easy to use and designed for maximum interoperability with third-party software.
We'll make great pets
Well, since LimitNone's own website says that they are "...a leading provider of applications that leverage the revolutionary iPhone and other mobile devices to deliver communication solutions and GPS location-based services to mobile workers." this seems to be a bit of a failed business agreement rather than a stolen core of their business plan. Is it kind of sleazy to steal somebodies idea and make it better? Perhaps, but it depends on a lot of other factors. The talks sounded like they started over a year ago. That's a long time on the internet - maybe Google needed it done now. And conversion software isn't exactly a "novel" idea.
They may be truly wronged, but my money is on the likelihood that they put in the order for the new yacht and private plane before they had shipping product and paying customers and now they're figuring to get the phantom money they might have had by fishing with expensive lawyers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Actually she got a total of $640,000 including cost of punitive damages. Her award for compensatory damages were reduced because, she was found partially at fault.
Honestly though, many people only take their coffee piping hot. And if every Tom, Dick, and Harry sued because something was too sharp, too hot, too cold, too blunt, too fast, too powerful, where would we be now. I should sue VW because I got a ticket for going 100mph.
There was one case (in Mississipi I think) where the dolts on the jury
added an extra zero to the amount requested by the plaintiffs. Pretty
much everyone objected to that verdict but it ultimately stood up
because that's what the jury wrote on a small piece of paper.
None of the appeals judges were willing to slay that sacred cow...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To start with, I have to say I'm siding with google on this... as all of the above posts have stated.
I just wanted to point something out. This is the difference of Googles rep and MS's rep. If MS did this, we'd be all over them searching for everything we could slant in their favor.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Emphasis mine. How much money would Google make from their free product? Of course, reading more finds that the claim is that Google is integrating this into their paid product (Google Apps Premier) rather than giving it away for free. Perhaps you knew that, but it wasn't evident in what you said.
Incidentally, there is a better written article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
In particular, that article points out that LimitNone is claiming that it divulged technical secrets to Google that Google then used in making its own product. Also, Google apparently changed its Google Apps interface in May of 2008, which caused the gMove product to break. That's apparently the violation of Illinois consumer laws.
Is that related to the differences between Standard and Premier? Apparently Standard does not allow for third party integrations but Premier does. Did Google tell LimitNone that the free version would always support gMove? If so, that will be interesting, as it will help to set expectations around how long Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. have to maintain API compatibility when they want to break it. All of them offer programs like this that allow third party developers to create apps that integrate with their platform. How long are those integrations warranted to work?
The real problem here is not in the relationship between Google and LimitNone but between Google and users of Apps standard edition. Google had been encouraging its users to pay $19 for this product but the functionality no longer works. Further, it apparently stopped working as a result of changes that Google made. If it turns out that it stopped working because Google started charging for something that it previously offered for free, should Google pay back the $19 to users?
It's not free. It comes with targetted adds and gets you hooked onto other google services that also come with targetted adds.
Plus, they get to undercut and destroy their competitors on the cheap (spend $200,000 now), since they don't need another potential Youtube situation (pay $3,000,000,000 to buy out a competitor later). Nipping competition in the butt is where it's at.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Damn, you beat me to it. And I really needed to slap someone today. ;-)
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
*Slap*
(Even lower UID than the first slap you got. Yeah.)
Bud.
Nip it in the bud.
Before it develops.
Like a flower.
Flowering plants have buds.
Bud.
Google is a publicly traded company and as such here's what's important to them.....
Making money for their stockholders.
Despite all the happy horse hockey about "Do no evil", Google needed to amend it's mission statement once it became a publicly trade company to "We do less evil than everyone else"
Google is going to do what is best in their corporate interest. Surprised? Don't be. It's business
Yes, it's a press release, but there is a real case and real filings. Before all you guys dismiss this case just because you heard it from a news wire, you ought check and see the court filings. Filed in Cook County Illinois, June 23, 2008, case number 2008-L-006828.
2008-L-006828 LIMITNONE LLC GOOGLE INC 06/23/2008
https://w3.courtlink.lexisnexis.com/cookcounty/Finddock.asp?DocketKey=CAAI0L0AAGICI0LD
Camping on quad since 1996.
LimitNone's only hope is language in a written contract promising that Google won't compete with their product. Absent that, they're toast. Let's face it, their product isn't much. There's nothing in it that hasn't been well-known and in wide use for the last 30 years, and thus can't be a trade secret. Google obviously knows their own formats and APIs for loading messages into gMail. In fact they had to have created them before LimitNone's product existed, if they hadn't LN couldn't have created their product at all. The file formats and things like Exchange server APIs aren't exactly secret. Copying all messages from one to the other is the same basic copy loop that's been used for 40-some years: open input; while not eof(input) do read(input); write(output); done; close input. A loop to iterate through folders and some recursion to handle subfolders, I was doing that in high school. Look and feel? LimitNone's probably using the standard tree-view widgets provided by the system, so yes Google's app will look like theirs because both of them look like the standard system widgets. That's assuming the apps allow message-level selectivity, if they limit it to folder-level or "everything on this server", the UI's even more generic. And the concept of importing mail messages from an old client into a new one? Hardly new. Mail clients have been importing other client's mailboxes since as long as there've been mail clients. Thunderbird has been doing it IIRC for a couple years now, well before LimitNone's product was created.
LimitNone's problem is that they're trying to charge $29 for a basic one-shot function that comes standard with most mail clients and that frankly could be hacked up by a single programmer in a few weeks of full-time work.
Google gets sued by $foo_small_co:
Random Slashdotter: Damn legal system makes everyone thing they can ge rich by suing.
Microsoft gets sued by $bar_small_co:
Random Slashdotter: See?! I told you M$ was teh evil look how they tried to step on the small guy and squash them like a BUG under their giant boot of Orwellian global dominance!!!!
Slashdot gets sued by Random Slashdotter:
*World implodes*
I hate printers.
The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.
I'm not a doctor by any means, but I have had some biology and physics courses. There just isn't enough stored energy in a cup of coffee to do this.
A first degree burn has redness, swelling and sensitivity (think sunburn); A second degree burn shows blistering; third degree involves destruction of the outer layers of skin and charring of the flesh. At worst she would have experienced mild to moderate second degree burning.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Slightly off-topic but it's amusing how "Don't be evil" or "Do no evil" gets touted as Google Inc.'s "core philosophy" or company motto.
When in reality it's chapter 6 of their Corporate Philosophy page, titled "You can make money without doing evil" -- outlining what kind of advertising you should use.
They aren't even talking about themselves; let alone their business model.
So why not give them some slack, everybody. They never claimed they are saints. (Although IMHO they are one of the better behaved companies out there.)
McDonald's put special holes in their building to sell stuff to people in cars. The put scalding-hot coffee in flimsy, slippery cups with flimsy, slippery lids, and then give you cream and sugar separately. And they do this to early-morning, pre-caffeine zombies. It should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you do this millions of times a day, some people are going to end up in the hospital without expecting it.
VW plans for normal operator error in a host of ways. Good visibility. Good lights. Good user feedback through gauges, car feel, and road feel. Brakes and steering built to handle emergencies. Seat belts, frames, air bags, and a bunch of other little touches optimized for survival after error.
McDonald's, on the other hand, even after being told that they were putting people in the hospital unnecessarily, shrugged and carried on.
1. It does not appear to be their corporate face (they do iPhone stuff)
2. They worked with Google for a year, then things went sour (Google made their own and LimitNone has no boxed product)
3. They suing for a Billion dollars, as opposed to, say, expenses (time and materials) during the working period, likely in the high-6 to low-7 figure range.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Yes, you are correct
Better yet, your comment was
Almost a haiku
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Sorry, I got them mixed up, 20% second degree, some third degree. The coffee (by McDonalds' standards) was kept between 180-190 degrees F. They have since lowered the temperature.
You can, of course, look up the facts of the case and make sure I read them correctly, but third degree burns were cited as an injury.
In fact, during testimony, one of the Doctors brought in as an expert witness stated that at just ten degrees cool, the burns would have been very mild.
1 second exposure to 160 degree water = third degree burns:
http://www.tap-water-burn.com/
McDonald's coffee was 185 degrees:
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
Unless google actually stole their CODE i don't see how there's much merrit here. I mean 'new or innovative' certainly doesn't apply to the concept of importing information from one email client to another.
Furthermore, it's google API's in gmail and the interaction with them is obviously standardized same with MS and exchange APIs. So yes, your method is going to be very similar to any competition by design.
At a guess things probably went more like
'hi google we're company XYZ and working on this nifty exchange importer. Can you lend a hand since we're teh sux at programming'
'sure, here's one of our programming guru's who has some spare time that can help out'
'thanks, we're sure to make a bundle off this one!'
'err wait. we're not going to help you build a product to sell. we give away stuff here remember?'
'nooooo you must! you're google! Well we got enough out of you to farm the rest out to india and still get rich'
'that's fine, enjoy.'
When will people learn? There are basic rights granted to US citizens. the right to get rich (or even earn money) is not one of them - much less the right to guaranteed money!!!
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
The concept of moving emails and all from Exchange is simple but doing for $19 per company, flawlessly, without need for customer support, without risk of blowing up the Exchange box would be really tough. Most people who are in the $19 product range are not that technical. If it wasn't perfect this would be brutal on the support staff. If Google was having trouble and this company showed them how not to have trouble, then Google seems to owe them something. Everyone always thinks the other person's product is easy....rare they think their own is.