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Google, Yahoo!, Apple Targeted In DoJ Antitrust Probe
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."
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...In 2005, Microsoft sued Google for hiring away Kai-Fu Lee...
Good. Hopefully these actions will lead to the outlawing of vaguely wide-ranging NDAs which state that employees may not work for "competitors" for X years after leaving their companies. I wish that TFA provided the list of all the companies because they didn't mention whether or not Microsoft was in the list despite their example above.
Antitrust experts say that could include wireless carriers and software operators that may be blocking certain applications from running on their networks and devices.
Let's hope so.
Why do we trust google, again?
It seems to me like there's another angle on this, from the perspective of the affected employees, not the customers/competitors.
By forming a pact that keeps an employee at company A from getting a job at any other company in the cartel, doesn't that run afoul of federal fair labor laws?
Seriously neither Google nor Yahoo! are anything close to a monopoly.
Nothing in this article was talking about any of the four listed companies being a monopoly. This was about collusive behavior to not recruit away talent from each other.
I used to drive a Hyundai Sonata. Whenever I took it out, I would get stares because the heap would lay down a huge black cloud of exhaust when I pressed the gas. I would occasionally think about getting it fixed, but never really got around to it. Then one day I was t-boned at an intersection. The car was totaled.
In the business world, things are much the same way. Collision is just as bad as a monopoly.
"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."
They are investigating collusion in the labor market - in this case, the companies themselves are the consumer, and job seekers provide the service. But this has nothing to do with cutting out competitors and hurting consumers. What they are doing is collusion in a market which, though probably illegal, keeps costs down, not up.
"look at the network effects of high-tech companies and ... grasp on markets ..." is shorthand for increased government regulation, whether warranted or not. What will happen when they decide to investigate the companies that supply toilets, and find out that "only" 10 companies "dominate" the market? They may not be colluding, but OBVIOUSLY such a small number of companies id bad for the market, and hence requires regulation of their pricing to protect the consumer.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The US Government is short of that.
Even though I own multiple Apple products I would rather see DOJ bust Apple's balls than MS. At MS doesn't dictate whose machine I can run their OS on (even though I have no Windows computers art home). As for Google, they have money, they are current at issue with various "AA" groups that have relations with people in the new guy's administration.
Besides this about restricting employee for leaving for better offers by agreeing not to see out talent from agreed upon companies. In other words, if they like you they might be willing to make a deal with a competitor so you won't be offered a reason to leave.
I still figure most of it is about getting more money
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Oh I don't know [arstechnica.com] He has been doing favors for all his supporters, Like those car Dealerships whom supported him somehow manage to stay open.
Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
But if you want to keep Diluting yourself into "hope and change" then don't mind me, go right ahead.
Except I never voted for Obama and have disagreed with almost everything he's done. Doesn't mean I won't still correct people who are spreading nonsense.
You are looking at the wrong statistics. The most profitable dealers have remained open. It's not about performance, it's about profitability on both ends. Those two are not necessarily tied together. You can be a poor performer and there are tons of ways to make excess additional amounts per sale to the manufacturer, and this is in fact quite common at dealerships that have lower volume of sales.
Wait, someone voted for a Browser Helper Object? I've never heard of one being elected, personally.
How is this a troll? Sure a link pointing out one of the reasons it's a red herring would have been nice but I don't see how it's a troll.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If he's really worth it, the former employee should be paid to not work for the competition.
You mean like WolframAlpha? They can be competed with. May take some deep pocket investors and a high power altruistic talent but it happens.
Why bother
It's an illegal restraint of trade under US antitrust law. It's not "monopoly", which is sell-side, it's "monopsony", which is buy-side.
Farmers classically face monopsony situations. This was much worse when most farm products moved only by rail. When there was only one buyer with a rail loading facility in an area, farmers were really screwed. That's why there are so many farmer's cooperatives in the US, and USDA efforts to control monopsonies. For what it was like before that, see "A Deal In Wheat", from 1903.
The point is, if your skills are sufficiently specialized, the ONLY possible work you could find is at your competition, so you are kept from finding work in your field. That is why non competes are illegal
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10