Google Accused of Racketeering. Lawsuit Claims 'Pattern' Of Trade Secret Thefts (mercurynews.com)

schwit1 quotes the Mercury News: In an explosive new allegation, a renowned architect has accused Google of racketeering, saying in a lawsuit the company has a pattern of stealing trade secrets from people it first invites to collaborate. Architect Eli Attia spent 50 years developing what his lawsuit calls "game-changing new technology" for building construction. Google in 2010 struck a deal to work with him on commercializing it as software, and Attia moved with his family from New York to Palo Alto to focus on the initiative, code-named "Project Genie." The project was undertaken in Google's secretive "Google X" unit for experimental "moonshots."

But then Google and its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin "plotted to squeeze Attia out of the project" and pretended to kill it but used Attia's technology to "surreptitiously" spin off Project Genie into a new company, according to the lawsuit... This week, a judge in Santa Clara County Superior Court approved the addition of racketeering claims to the lawsuit originally filed in 2014. Attia's legal team uncovered six other incidents in which Google had engaged in a "substantially similar fact pattern of misappropriation of trade secrets" from other people or companies, according to a July 25 legal filing from Attia.
Wired reported yesterday that Project Loon -- also a Google X project -- "is embroiled in a lawsuit with Space Data, a small company accusing Alphabet of patent infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract following a failed acquisition bid."

The lawyer for the racketeering suit complains Google can deploy a "virtually unlimited budget to fight these things in court."

Comments

8==D=O==N=O==E=V=I=L==D-~~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

Infringe my asshole with your patents!

Re:8==D=O==N=O==E=V=I=L==D-~~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may or may not know this, but the most frequent phrases used by evil people is "Trust me" or "Trust us." They say the opposite of what they mean, like "Do no evil."

Re:8==D=O==N=O==E=V=I=L==D-~~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

the most frequent phrases used by evil people is "Trust me" or "Trust us."

And "believe me".

Re:8==D=O==N=O==E=V=I=L==D-~~-_.

[war4peace]

Also, "believe in me".
After all, it's what created all religions.

Re:8==D=O==N=O==E=V=I=L==D-~~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you basically saying that I shouldn't trust Donald Trump? That's unpossible!

When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a company not to be fucking trusted. I'm so done with Google - moved to Bing, Firefox, and any other replacement I can find.

Re:When will people finally realize

[mschwanke97402]

DuckDuckGo!

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

There needs to be more than that. They need to be afraid to behave this way. People need to be scared to work with or for them.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that. The piece is definitely accurate, they are crooks. I struggle to bring to mind anything they've ever done that wasn't based on one of these 'partnerships', if not at the least being derivative and 'me too', just like Microsoft used to do in the 90s. Crazy that now, years later, Microsoft is pivoting to open source and Google is pivoting to the mother of all SEC investigations (actually, they are probably tied with Bezos in that race). :P

Re:When will people finally realize

[Tablizer]

...not to be fucking trusted. I'm so done with Google - moved to Bing, Firefox, and any other replacement...

You know you jumped the Satanic Shark when people switch to Microsoft to avoid you.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

As a longtime Linux advocate this is a complete mindfuck for me. It's like getting back together with your skanky ex that cheated on you, but now she's grown up, mature, and dignified looking and you're somehow in a functional relationship. But you still sorta don't trust her even though you found out your other ex, Google, now has AIDS.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

All I needed was to see how they took the You out of YouTube.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

MS didn't steal technology they bought it. MS didn't own the dominate desktop applications for their own OS. DOS WordPerfect was the dominate word processor, DOS Lotus-123 was the dominate spreadsheet, DBASE was a leader of the desktop database, and Netscape owned 90% of the browser market. When MS moved from DOS to Windows most of these companies didn't put the effort into porting their applications to the new OS. They decided it was easier to sell their technologies to MS and reap a big pay day. However, Netscape surrendered a 90% market share due incompetent leadership. Even today their are a lot of people and companies who develop something new for the sole purpose of getting MS to buy them out.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not evil when Google does it. It's just "mysterious ways."

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

That's when you think back and can't help but wonder if Google had AIDS the whole time and just wasn't completely honest with you. You start reflecting and remember every time she showed you her test results the pages were folded over in half....

Re:When will people finally realize

[PopeRatzo]

This is a company not to be fucking trusted. I'm so done with Google - moved to Bing, Firefox, and any other replacement I can find.

Your first mistake was ever trusting anyone with the last name, "Inc."

Don't believe - not for a minute - that there is any corporation on earth that can be trusted. Late-stage capitalism requires evilness. It's simply part of their equation and should be part of yours.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

This site uses Google tracking. AC is leaving Slashdot. Lets throw a party!! Any left over birthday cake? By the way, will Slashdot get embedded pictures for its 21st birthday?

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

MS didn't steal technology they bought it.

You mean the way they didn't steal on-the-fly disk compression after a demonstration/discussion with Stacker? Or the way they didn't steal the design of their Dove-bar mouse after discussions with the original designer (can't recall the name ATM)?

When MS moved from DOS to Windows most of these companies didn't put the effort into porting their applications to the new OS.

Ri-i-ight. And Microsoft didn't withhold a buttload of API info from WordPerfect's devs while they used the info to improve Word.

Do a little research before defending the evil empire, chum.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the way they 'bought' Internet Explorer for zero Dollars?

Re:When will people finally realize

[RevDisk]

While I don't disagree with any of your comments, any time someone uses the term "late-stage capitalism"... Every origin story of the term I'm familiar with has roots in Marxism. Mostly I've seen it used by people angry at modern economics, but zero practical suggestions on how to correct it. Marxism as a fashion fad kind of thing, like wearing Che shirts that they bought with a credit card from a chain store, I suppose.

I'm far from a knee-jerk reactionary capitalist, but those guys didn't come up with a better solution. Private property and some form of capitalism has always existed whenever not outlawed by whoever was in power. While our modern economic situation has absolutely tons of problems, systemic ones at that, I've so far never heard of a remotely realistic large scale alternative.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the Catholic Church in the crusades hunh?

Re: When will people finally realize

[lucm]

There needs to be more than that. They need to be afraid to behave this way. People need to be scared to work with or for them.

After the whole "we hate white men" thing I wrote them off and cancelled any service I had with them. And then we found out why they're so hell-bent on hiring women instead of men: they pay them less, a clever tactic that's about to become a class action. So this new information about their crooked business deals is not really a surprise.

The funny part is that the only Google product I still use is Chrome because for some reason it's the only browser that works with Spotify on Linux. A free Google product to use a paid service from a competitor...

Re:When will people finally realize

[Papaspud]

hahahahahahaha

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how Mark Cuban made a cool billion dollars?

There was this guy Chris who wanted to distribute football commentary to people watching the game in the stadium (metal bars in the stadium made listening to radios not possible). As time went on, his original plan to use a radio handset was replaced to instead use internet enabled devices. Mark Cuban entered the scene as a VC, buying 2% of Chris' company for $10k.

After quibbling whether the 2% of dilutable or not, Mark said, "You know, guys. I'm just going to do it on my own. I don't really need you Chris, but I'd like to have you come work with me." So once Mark had stolen the idea for the business, he made the original creator a 20% partner of a new company while he (Mark) owned 80%. Mark created and launched broadcast.com and sold it to Yahoo for billions. The original creator's 20% ownership was heavily diluted and he made less than 1% from the company he created.

This is similar to what Google is doing here. Patents are hated among engineers and slashdotters, but for business people it's the difference between surviving and getting robbed blind, between some big company making billions by stealing ideas and the creator making those billions.

Interview with Chris Jaeb, original creator of broadcast.com:
https://mixergy.com/interviews...

Re:When will people finally realize

[drinkypoo]

While our modern economic situation has absolutely tons of problems, systemic ones at that, I've so far never heard of a remotely realistic large scale alternative.

You don't need megacorporations to accomplish large projects. Co-ops of co-ops are capable of doing the same things.

Re:When will people finally realize

[rholtzjr]

This has more to do with greed and the quest for absolute power than it does with capitalism. Capitalism should not be conflated with evil, however it can be used as a tool when abused as with all tools. Remember always that it never has been the tool that is evil as they are usually inanimate object or concepts. It should always be remembered that it is the PERSON(S) who uses it for detriment that is the evil part.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that capitalism is pretty great so long as people have capital, but otherwise it's indistinguishable from slavery.

If you're doing pretty well for yourself and have a nice nest-egg, paid off your house and can fall back on savings if something bad happens, everything is hunky-dory with capitalism.

If you're working a job you hate where your boss does all kinds of illegal things, but you can't quit because you and your kid will be out on the street; how is that different than being a slave? Oh, right: in the olden days, slave owners were responsible for their workers. Now, they can just pay less than it costs to keep someone alive, and rely on their bought-and-paid-for lawmakers to have the state (i.e. the taxes mostly taken from other not-terribly-well-off people) to make up the difference.

I think the financial crisis was a bit of a tipping point; the rich realised that they could get away with ANYTHING. They destroyed the entire economy, and their friends in Washington paid them to do it.

Re:When will people finally realize

[GrumpySteen]

It's like getting back together with your skanky ex that cheated on you, but now she's grown up, mature, and dignified looking and you're somehow in a functional relationship.

Windows 10 is still sending fuckloads of your data to Microsoft. The skanky ex hasn't grown up or matured. She's had a boob job and you're too distracted by the tits to notice that she's swiping the contents of your wallet.

Re:When will people finally realize

[thegarbz]

Google can't be trusted so you moved to Microsoft. ... Are you high?

Re:When will people finally realize

[hord]

Personally I think a big part is property distribution. Proudhon was very skeptical of limitless property rights and the ability to gate everything up. The Greeks had this same issue as I understand it. They had a system of perpetually slicing up land for heirs that eventually failed due to inefficiency.

To sustain life one must either go into nature and pluck from it or work the land until such a time can be made. Either action requires the land to do so. In today's world no one is capable of just going onto land to live. That means as a human being you are now required to perform completely unnatural actions to sustain basic functions. You must have some source of income which will probably be a job. This job is not directly related to your own fulfillment and ability to provide for yourself. It is an abstract that is a small cog of some much larger machine called "society".

Personally all I see with that set up are problems because it locks people into a system that they may not necessarily want to either participate in or are even capable of doing so. Now you bring out the social safety net but no one asked for that, really because it means more entanglement in a system that was never wanted in the first place.

Now imagine that if you lost your job you could go work some land without asking permission from anyone. That's a whole different proposition.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Entrope]

Kumbayah, comrade, kumbayah!

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

While our modern economic situation has absolutely tons of problems, systemic ones at that, I've so far never heard of a remotely realistic large scale alternative.

You don't need megacorporations to accomplish large projects. Co-ops of co-ops are capable of doing the same things.

If they have enough hemp. : D

Re:When will people finally realize

[mjm1231]

And myriad used to mean exactly 10,000. The origin may be interesting, but it isn't necessarily relevant.
Also, just because you haven't thought of a solution doesn't mean the problem is acceptable. There's no cure for cancer yet either.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop dating skanks guys...

Re:When will people finally realize

[Bing Tsher E]

Windows 10 isn't really doing that, unless you have it configured incorrectly. It's no better or worse than the surveillance that Google does, except Google openly surveils topical information about your explicitly to build a profile of you they can use to steal your attention away from what you intend to be doing, while Microsoft mostly monitors for usability and bugcatching purposes (lord knows they need to).

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

"have the state (i.e. the taxes mostly taken from other not-terribly-well-off people) "

The top 10% of wage earners pay 70% of the taxes. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Bing Tsher E]

You'll need a LOT of hemp. Hemp is only a T4 Resource in a world with eight tiers.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a company not to be fucking trusted. I'm so done with Google - moved to Bing, Firefox, and any other replacement I can find.

duckduckgo.com

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a company run by white men with 70% male employees hates white men. Sure.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft told Lotus that OS2 was their future OS. Lotus put all their resources into Lotus 123 G for OS2. Then MS turned OS2 development over to IBM and promoted Windows 3. They just happened to have developed versions of Word and Excel ready at launch of Windows 3. Available for purchase at a deep discount! The rest is history.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, we can replace it with "endemic regulatory capture and monopoly control over major industries, the natural end state of any capitalist economy without external influences." Happy?

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus and Quattro Pro became available for Windows as well, but by then Excel was The Standard. QP for Windows was far ahead of Excel in many ways, including tabs, sheets, and general usefulness, but again Office was the standard and everybody else was (and still is) niche.

Word was a major player in DOS, though not dominant as it is in Windows. Pre-Excel, MS had Multiplan in DOS, which was definitely also-ran compared to Lotus and Quattro, and which is probably the real basis for Excel - many similarities in overall user interface structure. They also hit the Mac market early and hard, with Office quickly becoming the dominant software in businesses using Mac; having experience with all of them, I'd say that the Mac experience was important when it came to producing not only Windows 3.x but also Office in that environment.

Does anybody remember DeScribe? Very early word processor for Win3. I still have a floppy disk with it. Runs in 32-bit Windows (16-bit program). Very strange...

Re:When will people finally realize

[Rob Y.]

They may monitor for bugcatching and usability, but that's not why they monitor. They want the same kind of information the Google has - and they want to use it for the same purposes. And they're willing to stick themselves in between you and Google to grab it. Remember when Bing used to (did it ever stop?) forward your searches to Google and use the results to prop up the relevancy of their own?

If Google is really stealing people's ideas, that's pretty nasty and they should stop (or be stopped). But they came by the information about your preferences honestly - they traded you some pretty good services for it - including an open source browser that you can get without Google's spyware attached. Feel free to stop using those services if you're no longer comfortable with how they operate, but don't kid yourself that the replacements will be any better. I only occasionally find the results of Google's snooping to be creepy. Facebook, on the other hand, inundates me with ads for every commercial site I visit immediately after going there. It's like being stalked by any and all products you express an interest in. Super creepy - but probably pretty effective. I may even buy those SoftScience shoes one of these years...

You'd think there'd be a market for new services that sold you to advertisers in aggregate (based on age and sex - nothing more), like TV does. If people used those services, they'd be popular and profitable. But good luck getting funding to scale them up to compete with Google or Facebook or Bing or Outlook. The money guys want to maximize profit - they're not interested in a successful business that throws of a decent income. Still, if the public could persuade itself (cause nobody's going to pay to persuade them) to use such services, advertisers would be forced to support them - and their creators would get rich. And if they resisted going public, maybe they could stay rich without being forced to get greedy too...

Re:When will people finally realize

[Rob Y.]

Nobody ever said Marx didn't correctly identify the problem - only that his solutions sucked. That's no reason to pretend that "late-stage capitalism" isn't full of problems - and that the US can't function as a free society while still reigning it in.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Rob Y.]

You don't even need co-ops to accomplish that. You can do fine with garden variety large corporations that are forced to compete with other large corporations rather than allowed to buy them up to attain monopoly or near-monopoly profits.

Re:When will people finally realize

[dristoph]

"Private property and some form of capitalism has always existed whenever not outlawed by whoever was in power."

Uhh, big fat "citation needed" there. At the very least, you must acknowledge that *ubiquitous* private property is extremely young in terms of the span of human existence. For example, "enclosure", the practice of using state coercion to covert formerly communal agricultural land into private plots for private exploitation began in England and other parts of Europe only as recently as the 16th century. These policies were combined with new laws against vagrancy, essentially forcing the previous inhabitants into towns where they had no choice but to take up a wage job and become a tenant under a landlord to survive.

Furthermore, the vast majority of human history, talking hundreds of thousands of years, is one of nomads and hunter-gatherer communities which lived without private property.

You've made a bare assertion here, and it turns out it's completely untethered from history.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Analytics (and many other trackers) can be blocked with NoScript in Firefox, though it's kind of middling in terms of tracking; many web sites (including many government ones) use it to see what kind of traffic their site is getting and fine-tune things for better results. There's probably something similar in Chrome - and once NoScript goes entirely WebExtension (as required by upcoming Firefox versions, and nearly there) it should be trivial to port it to Chrome if it isn't there already. Leaving IE/Edge as the browsers that offer the user the least control over what they're seeing.

FWIW, here are the connections that NoScript reports for /. - slashdot.org, fsdn.com, truste.com (those are probably fairly safe, and there wouldn't be anything visible without them); gstatic.com, slashdotmedia.com (both trackers, cookies blocked by Privacy Badger); stack-sonar.com, crsspxl.com, rpxnow.com, ml314.com, (several incomprehensibles)@cloudfront.net, taboola.com, janrain.com, and pro-market.net. Most of those are ad networks, trackers, or both. It's not just Google that's watching everything you do.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Imma need a citation from both of you.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys just don't get it...as Google Asshole Shawn Willden would readily assure you, racketeering is actually a Really Good Thing!!!

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the problem with all companies that grow too much, the power and wealth consolidation only brings imperialists wannabees (They think they are in a war with the world, keep playing business chess instead of actually making good competitive products without deceiving customers, most of those start making mafias, like telcos, cable companies, pharmaceuticals, etc.).

Re:When will people finally realize

[ChatHuant]

Google can't be trusted so you moved to Microsoft. ... Are you high?

There is a significant difference though. Microsoft wants to sell you stuff. You may not like the stuff they sell, but once they get your money the deal is done and finished. You can choose not to buy what they sell, and at this point you have no relationship with them - nothing to do with them or their products.

Google however doesn't want to sell you stuff. They want to sell YOU. You, your life, your very existence is what Google wants. Google's never-sleeping eye is on you all the time. They stalk you, on the web and outside it, whether you use any of their products or not. On the web, they'll follow you around, read your mail - if you're foolish enough to have a gmail account, log all your DNS queries if you're foolish enough to use their DNS servers. In real life, they'll log all the places you ever go, if you have an Android phone with location services. They'll get all your credit card transactions, without any way for you to stop it, or even be notified when they do. And now, they're even putting spies (sorry, "personal assistants") in your home to eavesdrop on anything anybody says. And there is no easy way to avoid them. Even if you don't use GMail, Google search or maps, lots and lots of non-Google web sites are happy to snitch on you - for example, Slashdot calls both gstatic and google-analytics.

If you don't trust Microsoft, you can live a Microsoft-free life. But, even if you don't trust Google, you have no way to avoid their collecting of YOUR data. You won't even know how your data ends up in their files. They don't particularly need your trust for that. This, in my opinion is an order of magnitude more evil than anything Microsoft has ever done.

Re:When will people finally realize

[ChatHuant]

[Microsoft] want the same kind of information the Google has - and they want to use it for the same purposes.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me - Google owns Doubleclick, and they make their money almost exclusively from ads. The information they get is extremely important to them - that's what they sell to their clients. Google is essentially an advertising company, and all their offerings are tailored to collect more information on you - who are Google's product, not Google's customer.

Microsoft has very different sources of income. For Microsoft you are the customer. They make their money from selling actual products and services. Collecting your data wouldn't be as valuable to them as it is for Google, so why would they make the effort and deal with the related hassles? Especially since, last I looked, the online services division in MS was losing, not making money.

In view of this, your statement doesn't seem believable. Do you have any sources to back it?

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that just google but with extra steps?

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not any of the previous ACs in this thread, but I will provide a citation: WSJ: Top 20% of Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax. One flaw of the article is that it only considers income taxes, but not capital gains taxes, which are considerably lower.

Re: When will people finally realize

[ChrisMaple]

A court case decided that their implementation of disk compression was essentially a copy of Stacker's. It's not just the compression algorithm, it's also code details and user interface.

Any undocumented API call in a closed source OS is secret. They are commonplace, often just because they're experimental features, but in Microsoft's case it was to gain a competitive advantage.

Here's an example of how this might be done. Let's say that the OS has a documented call to put one character on the screen, which takes 1 microsecond, and an undocumented call to put up to 10,000 characters on the screen, which takes up to 50 microseconds. A program written by someone aware of the undocumented call can put 10,000 characters on the screen in 50 microseconds, but for anyone else putting 10,000 characters on the screen it's going to take 10,000 microseconds. That's a competitive advantage made possible by a secret API call.

Re:When will people finally realize

[ChrisMaple]

Translation from Fool to English
The problem is that freedom is pretty great so long as people are free, but otherwise it's indistinguishable from slavery.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Ri-i-ight. And Microsoft didn't withhold a buttload of API info from WordPerfect's devs while they used the info to improve Word.

Pretty standard practise. Apple does exactly the same thing with its private APIs. They use this anti-competitive practise to disadvantage competitors and prop up their music service by only allowing themselves access to Siri's APIs for playing music.

Re: When will people finally realize

[ChrisMaple]

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update/. Other sources provide similar results. You cold have found the results yourself, but you're too lazy, and that's why you'll never be that rich.

Re:When will people finally realize

[ChrisMaple]

OK, I'm saying Marx didn't correctly identify the problem. You can never truthfully make your claim again.

Re:When will people finally realize

[ChrisMaple]

There are many internet radio sites that won't play without at least temporarily allowing Google Analytics.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently don't realize that a) Microsoft and sending tons of the data off your computer back to their servers and the b) cortana etc. is collecting your data. All so they can sell you.

Re:When will people finally realize

[mschwanke97402]

I don’t care where DuckDuckGo gets results from as long as they don’t track my searches or sell my data.

Re:When will people finally realize

[wilson_mura]

search -> duckduckgo; web -> Brave, firefox has an initiative tu filter out content

Re: When will people finally realize

[pnutjam]

I've been unable to get the linux spotify client to work on opensuse and was also using the web client on chrome (ugh!). However, I recently realized I can bluetooth connect my phone and pipe everything over to the laptop from the Android client.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Rob Y.]

Microsoft may have different sources of income - but they also tend to see where other people are making money and, if there's software involved, jump on the bandwagon and go after it themselves. In the case of search, Microsoft may simply want to deny Google their income (i.e. "choke off their air supply" as a notorious MS memo said of Netscape back when), in order to prevent them from threatening MS in other areas. I suppose they could continue to develop and support Bing for that reason alone - though it's a costly enterprise that you'd think they'd like to have pay for itself.

In any case, Bing is most certainly storing information about your searches - and Windows is sending MS information about your other web activities. If the only purpose were to hurt Google, giving away free competing services should suffice. Now in the case of search, storing the info makes search work better - that's one of the reasons Google does it too. It seems to me that the problem of Windows tracking you is that it happens without your knowledge, consent, or even the use of Microsoft's 'free' services. The OS is still a monopoly (try buying a computer without it), and still something you pay for. If MS also wants to provide free stuff in exchange for your personal info, I guess there's nothing stopping them - and nothing stopping you from using those services. But there's nothing in your 'agreement' to use Windows that should give Microsoft the exclusive right to a stream of your personal activities - for moneymaking purposes or otherwise...

Re:When will people finally realize

[thegarbz]

They want to sell YOU.

No they don't. They want to sell ACCESS to you. There's a big difference. Google are about the people I most trust with my information as they are the least likely to give it away to someone else.

Microsoft on the other hand don't have a business model that depends on owning your data. When ownership of your data is a secondary profit for the company they are much more likely to just sell it wholesale.

If you don't trust Microsoft, you can live a Microsoft-free life.

Oh now I KNOW your are high.

Re: When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

If an OS library is slow you write your own. You can write the same app using native Win32 or .NET or Qt or Java or use raw NT calls or even write it in assembly and forgo any API and just rely on the ABI. You are not limited by what programming APIs an OS vendor provides. The OS kernel doesn't know or care who is using its resources.

Here's an example of how this might be done. Let's say that the OS has a documented call to put one character on the screen, which takes 1 microsecond, and an undocumented call to put up to 10,000 characters on the screen, which takes up to 50 microseconds. A program written by someone aware of the undocumented call can put 10,000 characters on the screen in 50 microseconds, but for anyone else putting 10,000 characters on the screen it's going to take 10,000 microseconds. That's a competitive advantage made possible by a secret API call. /quote

That is completely absurd. Games re-implement the "putting a thing on the screen quickly" about thrice every year. Nobody is limited by whatever weakass library microsoft provides to do that.

Infact, the only person who thinks a "secret API" can exist is the lawyer who crafts these documents. Or maybe an idiot boss who tells his employee to write a "secret API". The employee proceeds to laugh, does some hand waving and collects his bonus.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Social Democracy - "a democratic welfare state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practices" (Merriam-Webster.com). That's the closest I've seen as a large-scale alternative. Marx may not have been completely right, but he did at least start the conversation that capitalism isn't the end all, be all of economic systems and it too has many problems.

Man, I miss Bernie.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, the vast majority of human history, talking hundreds of thousands of years, is one of nomads and hunter-gatherer communities which lived without private property.

That's not history, since it wasn't written down. It's pre-history. Actual history begins with the start of written records.

Furthermore, those aren't societies based on the rule of law, so they're irrelevant to the discussion. You can't outlaw things unless you have laws.

Re:When will people finally realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Social Democracy - "a democratic welfare state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practices" (Merriam-Webster.com). That's the closest I've seen as a large-scale alternative.

Seems like Merriam-Webster has some folks on their staff that are guilty of creating socialist propaganda (or at least spreading such propaganda, which is almost as bad).

The actual definition of "socialist" is that the workers control the means of production (Marx, Engels). That isn't the case on any large scale in any successful economy, which means it isn't a large scale alternative. It certainly isn't the case in states commonly referred to as socialist today, such as the states in Northern Europe. In those states, it is not the means of production that are controlled, but rather some of the outputs (in the form of high taxes). Europe has lots of billionaires - and they control a large share of the means of production, not the workers. Beyond that, we have control of the means of production by folks with lessor levels of wealth, but still wealthy, and finally the small business owners. Not all that different from the USA in terms of who controls the means of production - or any other capitalist state.

In short, either Merriam-Webster has the wrong definition, or there are no social democracies and they're defining something that doesn't exist.

The term "capitalist welfare state" is an accurate economic description both of states in Northern Europe and of the USA since the FDR era. The outcomes for people in each place are different, of course, since the USA is controlled by a two-party system with two extremely corrupt political parties (added to that is a lot of overhead associated with an unethical legal profession).

There are no meaningful large scale alternatives to capitalism, but we can hope to fix most of the problems with how capitalism is implemented in some countries. It's just a matter of addressing corruption and ethics problems, and that clearly can be done successfully because it has been done in many places.

Re:When will people finally realize

[ShamblerBishop]

Accidentally modded this. Replying to remove moderation.

Re:When will people finally realize

[VisceralLogic]

"Private property and some form of capitalism has always existed whenever not outlawed by whoever was in power."

Uhh, big fat "citation needed" there.

...

Furthermore, the vast majority of human history, talking hundreds of thousands of years, is one of nomads and hunter-gatherer communities which lived without private property.

You've made a bare assertion here, and it turns out it's completely untethered from history.

I notice a distinct lack of citations backing up your own assertions.

Re:When will people finally realize

[dristoph]

Unlike the very broad claim that "[x] has always existed", it's extremely easy to look up information about my very specific claims. I'll get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:When will people finally realize

[VisceralLogic]

Unlike the very broad claim that "[x] has always existed", it's extremely easy to look up information about my very specific claims. I'll get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Your link on Hunter Gatherers does not broach the topic of private property. Considering even animals instinctually have a notion of ownership, I have trouble believing private property did not exist in pre-historic times. But perhaps you have evidence to support your very specific claims that it is a recent invention?

Throwing their weight around

[Tablizer]

Well-known companies can be pushy dicks. I once contracted at a small-ish office equipment distributor, and it had an account with an entertainment conglomerate that starts with a "D". Big D would always request special conditions and special reports and wanted them ASAP. They were kept on because they served as bragging rights for the smaller company to bring in more business. "You know we are good because we have an account with D!" But after a while their dickativity exceeded their marketing value, and the distributor parted ways with them.

Re:Throwing their weight around

[Anonymous Coward]

Well-known companies can be pushy dicks. I once contracted at a small-ish office equipment distributor, and it had an account with an entertainment conglomerate that starts with a "D". Big D would always request special conditions and special reports and wanted them ASAP. They were kept on because they served as bragging rights for the smaller company to bring in more business. "You know we are good because we have an account with D!" But after a while their dickativity exceeded their marketing value, and the distributor parted ways with them.

Yeah, but with the company you're talking about, their entire business model is charging people to be associated with their name. That isn't the case with Google, although being associated with them might offer that same prestige.

Re:Throwing their weight around

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be fair Disney is already known to be dickish in so many other ways. Adding their distributors to the list of people being fucked over is not that much of a stretch.

Re: Throwing their weight around

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said Disney? Nobody. It could have been Dic.

Remember when shows would end with a little girl mispronouncing "dick?"
Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Re:Throwing their weight around

[Misagon]

They are infamous. If you do only a simple duckduckgo search, you will quickly find a dozen stories from the Entertainment industry about how "D" screwed people over.

Only the other day, I saw this: https://youtu.be/_pd6yO-jBRo
Quentin Tarantino's 70mm "The Hateful Eight" had been pushed out from the 70mm "Cinerama Dome" theatre because The Mouse wanted to show Star Wars there a couple weeks longer.

Re: Throwing their weight around

[drinkypoo]

Remember when shows would end with a little girl mispronouncing "dick?"

How odd. I was just thinking about this yesterday. With a name like DIC, they literally had no other choice but to have a child mispronounce it every time it appeared on PBS.

Re:Throwing their weight around

[ChrisMaple]

Theaters often hold over popular movies if they think it will sell better than the replacement. It isn't necessarily the studio's choice.

Reminds me of Bill Gates and MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in the position of pitching paradigm-shifting inventions to tech giants should read this book, written by the founder of a company with a pen-based mobile device in the early '90s. John Sculley got wind of it because Kaplan tried to hire away a top Apple engineer, and told him too much; the result was Apple's "innovative" Newton product. Gates learned about it because Kaplan was hoping to partner with MS; Gates and his lieutenant Jeff Raikes spent a full day at Go going over every single gesture, then returned to Redmond where they proceeded to knock it off as Pen Windows. Kaplan also dishes on his eventual business partners IBM and AT&T.

I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every big company does this. Scratch that. EVERY company does this.

If you have a good, original idea, patent it. If not, you're asking to get fucked.

mottos and titles

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do no evil" .. yeah right.
"Democratic Republic of __" .. yeah right.

Slow Blade Avoids Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this an example of slow hostile take-over and liquidation?

Do know evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a deal with the devil....

Re:Do know evil

[Ian A. Shill]

+1 Troll

Company mottos are always aspirational

[gurps_npc]

That is, they always speak of what the CEO wishes was true, rather than what is already true.

So Google really truly honestly wishes it were not evil.

But not enough to actually take action.

Re:Company mottos are always aspirational

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt a company gives one fuck about whether it's motto was true or not, so long as it helps bring in money.

Re:Company mottos are always aspirational

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not matter, as long as everyone keeps on pointing out how evil Google is.

Articles like the above where Google is stealing secrets, will be the downfall of Google eventually.

The USA does not have sane laws but the EU has and Google will have to repay mankind for the damage it caused there.

Re:Company mottos are always aspirational

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, they always speak of what the CEO wishes was true, rather than what is already true.
So Google really truly honestly wishes it were not evil.

That would be one example of many for why that hasn't been Google's motto for over a decade now.

Of course you will find fault with anything and everything so long as your criteria is basically "I'll make up whatever untrue claims I want and hold others responsible to them"

It's not unlike me claiming your motto is "I will never post on slashdot" and then using each of your posts as evidence your motto is aspirational...

here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[goombah99]

https://www.wired.com/story/th...

story links to an article about Loon in puerto rico not to the Space Data Lawsuit.

"Space Data pulled off something big: It convinced the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel most of one of Project Loon’s foundational patents, and say that Space Data came up with the idea first. Loon’s patent for changing a balloon’s direction by adjusting its altitude—a core feature of both systems—is now legally back in Space Data’s hands."

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[AuMatar]

?? Isn't that something hot air balloons have done for a century?

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[sg_oneill]

?? Isn't that something hot air balloons have done for a century?

Yeah. I'm gonna have to assume theres more to the patent than just that. Because a patent on that would be absurd.

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[lucm]

The article is worth a read.

At a TED talk in 2014, Google’s then-CEO Larry Page said: “We did some weather simulations which probably hadn't really been done before, and if you control the altitude of the balloons, which you can do by pumping air into them and other ways, you can actually control roughly where they go.”

Both men were describing the engineering feat that Space Data had sought to patent more than a decade earlier. Filings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) show that in 2000, Space Data began experimenting with a nationwide paging service from high-altitude balloons. Space Data filed its key patent application in 2001, and quickly went on to test text messages in 2002, phone calls in 2006, and 4G LTE data by 2012—a year before Google’s splashy launch.

What a bunch of common thieves and hypocrites

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[ShanghaiBill]

"Space Data pulled off something big: It convinced the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel most of one of Project Loon’s foundational patents, and say that Space Data came up with the idea first.

Most likely they did that by providing compelling evidence that their claim to prior art is true. That is the only way to invalidate an existing patent.

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[ShanghaiBill]

Yeah. I'm gonna have to assume theres more to the patent than just that. Because a patent on that would be absurd.

Patents are actually very hard for laypeople to understand. Unless you are a patent attorney, or have read a lot of patents, it is often very difficult to figure out exactly what innovations are covered. 99% of news articles about patents badly mangle the facts, usually by reporting the patent to be far broader than the actual claims.

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[Bing Tsher E]

It's much easier for big companies with huge budgets to engage in speculative activities like prior art searches.

In the spirit of anti-patent that prevails within a sizeable number of people here on Slashdot, we could cheer them on, except the same prior-art cancellations don't commonly happen to Google's patents.

For better or for worse, the legal system is largely 'owned' by the entities that can afford the lawyers.

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[Rob Y.]

Sometimes. And sometimes they're (yes) very specifically described versions of an obvious idea. But Google really must be losing the support of the Slashdot crowd if they're now presumed evil for infringing patents - without Slashdotters assuming from the outset that those patents must be invalid patents on obvious stuff...

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[ChrisMaple]

Prior art searches are not a big deal, particularly if you limit yourself to searching existing patents. It often takes about a day to find if someone has already done what you're trying to do, and that frequently helps you avoid dead-ends in your own design and gives you clues on how to design without infringing the existing patent.

Re:here's the correct link for Space Data V. Loon

[Anonymous Coward]

You really shouldn't do this. Look up "patent triple damages."

Isn't This The Norm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this more or less how ALL big companies work? I'm not saying it makes it any less of a dick move, but haven't companies been doing this practically since time immemorial?

Big Company X has lost the ability to innovate having had a few successes early on, so they look to small companies that have new ideas. Then they pretend like they're going to buy the small company, when really they've got their people working on reverse engineering the little guy's product/service, and then just before the deal closes, Big Company X drops its consideration of the small company only to come out with an almost identical product/service 6 months later.

I'm glad that there's some attention being brought to this, and hopefully Google doesn't just bury them under oceans of pre-trial motions and other stuff designed to make it prohibitively expensive to continue the case. If they have proof, I hope they get a big fat settlement check out of Google for it.

Google is Huli

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, as funny but basically the right characterization of how feelings get twisted.

It all started with Eric Schmidt, iPhone thief.

Re:Google is Huli

[Bing Tsher E]

Stealing from Apple would be one of the only forgivable things for Google to do.

When two bullies fight, they both sustain damage, and the only real loss is if they tread on the flowers while doing so.

Re:Google is Huli

[Miamicoastguard]

The Circle...

Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[chromaexcursion]

Shady business deals? What's new?
Racketeering? That's a stretch.
He may have been screwed. Maybe not. This is a case of contract law, not organized crime.
The judge will laugh him out of court.
The police, or at least the DA have to be involved to file a racketeering charge. Not going to happen.

why is this news?

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[taustin]

The judge will laugh him out of court.

The judge has already approved adding the racketeering charge to the suit. Not sure of the rules under California's RICO, but it's probably similar to federal rules. That means that the plaintiff has shown some pretty compelling evidence, and it becomes very difficult to stop it from proceeding to trial, once it's been certified.

The police, or at least the DA have to be involved to file a racketeering charge. Not going to happen.

Patently untrue. Both federal and California RICO statutes allow for private enforcement. A prosecutor would be necessary for criminal prosecution, but state RICO laws allow for treble damages in civil cases, which could easily run into the billions. It's difficult to do, but the judge has already been convinced to allow it.

why is this news?

Why do you comment on something you clearly know nothing about?

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[whoever57]

Why do you comment on something you clearly know nothing about?

Your /. id number indicates that you have been here for a long time. Were it not for this, i would be asking "are you new here?"

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

The taustin text near the "by" in his post header clearly demonstrates he is not new here. I think new here has moved over to SoylentNews. I saw him posting there a couple days ago.

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[chromaexcursion]

This case has not gone to trial.
These are only pre-trial motions.
The judge you've sited is not the trial judge.
This case will probably never go to trial. All of this is just posturing!

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Google will claim that everything they got from him was "work for hire."

This is all going to come down to the exact wording of his employment contract.

Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work

[ShanghaiBill]

This is all going to come down to the exact wording of his employment contract.

As it should. This is a contract dispute. The exact wording of the contract is the ONLY thing that matters. Since we don't know what it says, this entire discussion is silly.

Won't work but if it did....

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be the equivalent of a drug king-pin being taken down by broken tail light. Don't get me wrong, by normal standards what they did is totally criminal, but you're forgetting that they are Google. They have their tendrils in millions of organizations already, handling all of their internal communications, Documents, Forms, Analytics, etc. Not only that but they have AI digging through it all to arrive at conclusions so they don't even have to get their hands dirty.

So this, yeah, it's a crime, but they don't even have to steal out in the open like that. They don't even have to.

Re:Won't work but if it did....

[Anonymous Coward]

more like a heroin king-pin taken down by a joint at a concert.

NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Teh G is run by teh evilist of wackos in teh world.

Microsoft of the 90's

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon does this also for startups that talk to their M&A division. They call it a brain rape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc

Goolag.....

[Anonymous Coward]

.......busy doing evil.....

Evil

[Tulsa_Time]

Regulate Google and Facebook now as pubic utilities...

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you find this article? I tried googling for it and it didn't show up.

Re:Amazing

[schleimkeim]

It's the first hit when i search for 'google accused of racketeering'

They have a new sloggan

[rossz]

Don't get caught being evil.

In America, Whenever You Have Lots of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

People will always be filing lawsuits to try and get a piece of it.

Re:In America, Whenever You Have Lots of Money

[schleimkeim]

Because they have no other way of making decent money.

Microsoft?

[bernywork]

Wasn't Microsoft accused of this a lot?

Partner with someone, take their ideas in house, cut them off as a partner and then build / sell it themselves?

Google is not very innocent, either

[Skapare]

today, i wanted to watch a PBS TV show i missed, so i went to YouTube to see if it was there. there were tons of hour long videos with that title and episode (Finding Your Roots, season 4 episode 1) but were replaced with a link due to a copyright claim. but this link went to a scam site trying to get your credit card number, despite claims that it was free, and not to PBS. apparently Google will take a copyright claim from anyone, including scammers.

Re:Google is not very innocent, either

[thegarbz]

You're overthinking it. Those videos are pending to be copyright claims. They are just scams. Anyone can upload one like it.

Re:Google is not very innocent, either

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, either way that is fucked up and those google cocksuckers need to fucking fix that shit.

Beware of using Gmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Assumption of the fool: Google does not read my emails, all my G Docs and G Drive documents with my business ideas and my customer secrets are in safe hands, and Google will never use their search tools on my data to spot and notify their patent, marketing and legal departments on competitive information found.

It's more than search though

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more services to the Google world than search, though. I used to be a religious user of Google News as my news link aggregator. Google News, where the links are supposedly randomly chosen by a computer program. Well right around the time they fired James Damore they redesigned Google News and made it completely unusable. That combined was enough to piss me off enough to switch over to Bing News which I always assumed was a cheap knockoff but it opened my eyes to something. Bing News presents articles in a balanced form: in the masthead there are typically three articles, one from a right-wing source (Fox), one from a left-wing source (Huff Post) and a neutral source (e.g. ABC or BBC). Contrasting viewpoints and articles are typically presented together. (Fun fact: I sometimes see links to posts on the LKML as tech news headlines.) When you compare to Google News the sources from which the major headlines were pulled in my experience were almost all exclusively left-wing (e.g. Washington Post). It was at this point I wondered if Google isn't surreptitiously engaging in media manipulation to promote its SJW agenda. It could never be proved especially since Google doesn't actually author any news (they are just a link aggregator) but if you can effectively filter the news headlines presented to millions of people each day you can pretty sneakily promote a certain viewpoint. In contrast you don't expect to go to the Drudge Report and see anything but conservative news sources and viewpoint presented -- but you already know that going in. Most people see Google News as a random news aggregator. What we'll never know is if they're using loaded dice but I suspect you already know the answer.

Re:It's more than search though

[Rob Y.]

Really? Google News intersperses various left and right sources - but presents both. Of course you don't always know you've clicked on a right-wing source until you try to read it and discover it's nonsense.

One more time. Fox News is not right wing - it's propaganda. They do not attempt to perform actual journalism - only to present a veneer that looks like journalism. And yes, sometimes that veneer actually consists of some facts - as long as they don't get in the way of ideology. Doesn't change the calculus, though.

MSNBC is left-wing, but they do try to stick to facts - even on their opinion shows. Rachel Maddow sometimes tries too hard to make a point, which can make her seem curiously obsessed on some less than cosmic matter, but she does attempt to provide a factual basis for her arguments. The equivalent on the right are the likes of Brett Stephens and David Brooks. You can see Brooks' wheels turning and generally, reading him is an exercise in waiting for the pivot to the conservative point he's building up to. But he at least sticks to facts. False equivalences, to be sure - but factual ones...

This is what America has been doing for decades

[Anonymous Coward]

why do you think they invite highly educated European and Asian researchers on H1B visas? To absorb and suck up the knowledge, then use their moving back to their home-countries as a way of accusing THEM of stealing what Google, Microsoft etc. has taught them. It's despicable.

Same here

[Anonymous Coward]

My firm was a large partner, and we had a joint project to develop some stuff. The guys and girls at google then organised an event and publicised the product to our conpetitors as their own and offered it to them for free. In the grand scheme of things, we decided to continue working with them, but on different terms.

But this is a drop in the ocean of not-savory doings at google. They are the creepy stalker ex BF, the nosy neighbour and the totalitarian government all wrapped in one. The worst part is their belief in algoritms and dumb AI making decisions for us. What could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft leads

[Anonymous Coward]

... pretended to kill it but used Attia's technology ...

Big businesses don't have "enterprise partnerships" so they can buy tech, they have them so they can steal tech. The behaviour started in the 1970s and Microsoft perfected the technique of partnering with smaller businesses: which is why they've been sued only twice. (IIRC, one was Symbian but I can't find any details.)

Google wants something

[Anonymous Coward]

So they bring you onboard, make you sign contracts to hand over all rights over that something, then kicks you out because they got what they wanted.
Continue to be evil, Google.

related

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6h08z5/google_is_currently_trying_to_patent_video/

And, I'm not a crook!

[Anonymous Coward]

Compliments of Tricky Dick Nixon, who was still not as bad a president as the current POTUS.

Re: And, I'm not a crook!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a well known dirty practice of the high-tech biz field to invite smart people to pseudo-interviews and give them problems to solve with the purpose to get work done for free and not to hire the person being interviewed.

Re: And, I'm not a crook!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. Google is the only company that does any good. 95% of open source are contributed by Google. Why would they need to steal if they are giving so much away? You guys are clueless.

Re: And, I'm not a crook!

[hackwrench]

code.google.com was closed in favor of the non-Google GitHub.

Larry Ellison Did That And Nobody Cared

[Anonymous Coward]

See 'A Pattern Of Abuse', https://web.archive.org/web/20... Pattern Of Abuse

Food for much thought, there.

Microsoft Also Steals

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Official Rules of the Microsoft College Code Competition

HOW WILL MY ENTRY BE POTENTIALLY USED?

Other than what is set forth below, we are not claiming any ownership rights to your entry. However, by submitting your entry, you:

are granting us an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to: (i) use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze your entry and all its content in connection with this Contest; and (ii) feature your entry and all content in connection with the marketing, sale, or promotion of this Contest (including but not limited to internal and external sales meetings, conference presentations, tradeshows, and screen shots of the Contest entry in press releases) in all media (now known or later developed)

agree to sign any necessary documentation that may be required for us and our designees to make use of the rights you granted above;

understand and acknowledge that the Sponsor(s) may have developed or commissioned materials similar or identical to your submission and you waive any claims you may have resulting from any similarities to your entry;

understand that we cannot control the incoming information you will disclose to our representatives in the course of entering, or what our representatives will remember about your entry. You also understand that we will not restrict work assignments of representatives who have had access to your entry. By entering this Contest, you agree that use of information in our representatives’ unaided memories in the development or deployment of our products or services does not create liability for us under this agreement or copyright or trade secret law;

understand that you will not receive any compensation or credit for use of your entry, other than what is described in these Official Rules

Please note that following the end of this Contest your entry may be posted on a website selected by us for viewing by visitors to that website. We are not responsible for any unauthorized use of your entry by visitors to this website. While we reserve these rights, we are not obligated to use your entry for any purpose, even if it has been selected as a winning entry.

If you do not want to grant us these rights to your entry, please do not enter this Contest.

Dont forget trying to steal ANS public domain tech

[citizenr]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

http://www.pap.pl/en/news/news...

Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

... how did Cisco get its start in life again?

Do no evils

[Anonymous Coward]

Do as I say not do as I do

Buying to spare bad PR

[manu0601]

I do not understand why Google did not chose to bu the partners they wanted to steal ideas from. They have the money, and it would spare them bad PR.

also ... gmail mining

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use gmail, they can read your email without needing permission.

I have been surprised to see them rolling out some of my stuff that I basically gmailed to myself, and claiming to be innovative. (I'm a very senior engineer and creator.)

They haven't been "not evil" since they sold folks to die a few years ago. They are becoming quite the very Orwellian "big brother".

-Formerly Atreus

Re:I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

[ChrisMaple]

https://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf Not necessarily,

Who'd have thunk it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlaws just like Uber and hundreds of others. Criminals of the new century.

Technology | Tech News, Reviews & Updates

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