Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit • Hacker News Board

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#41

Post by ComputerGuru » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:20 AM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #25

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #12

In simple terms, google baited people with good ideas to join google x labs. Then pursued to cancel the projects, and thus cutting out the people who originated these ideas. Finally, google went on to use these ideas to create their own technology, and some have even graduated from Google X Labs. Basically, evil incubation.

You state it as it is fact. That’s what the plaintiff claims, yes. But it doesn’t mean it’s true.

If, as hinted in the article based off a judge in the case’s remarks, and Google’s defense is “we were under no obligation to compensate him” then it does seem that it is what went down.

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#42

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:20 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #38

paul7986 wrote: post #23

I had a similar experience with Google; a mutual NDA was signed as seen here https://goo.gl/K9Wd1U . - Feb 2013 created SpeakerBlast; turn multiple devices into one sync speaker via a URL - March 2013 Samsung released the Galaxy 4 with Group Play (same concept as SpeakerBlast) - April 2013 Google/Motorola emails/calls me asking would I sell SpeakerBlast for inclusion into the Moto X - May 2013 Fly out from Baltimore…

There is no benefit in complaining here. If you actually care, this sounds like it’s your opportunity to get a lawyer for some minimal amount of money to reach out to Attia’s lawyers and see if they’re interested. It seems they are pooling past examples demonstrating similar behavior.

Of course there's a reason to complain here. I can hardly think of a better place to get the word out to technology entrepreneurs if your goal is to do so.

(Not to imply anything about the truth or falsity of the allegations. I don't know whether any are true.)

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#43

Post by rurban » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:21 AM UTC

I call this bullshit.

> "Project Genie to educate Google about his proprietary ideas and techniques so they could develop a working proof of concept of his Engineered Architecture technology"

Parametric design and integration into AEC is industry standard since the 80-ies, and a long-time goal of virtually all design software manufacturers. Everybody had a take on this moonshot, and eventually it will get there.

It started with Christopher Alexanders "Design Patterns", when he won a city planning competition for the rebuilding of a destroyed Lima, Peru by offering simple recursive design patterns and not a grand master plan. In the following decades this was being incooperated into various design tools. In the 90ies I based a university course on that ("Computer Assistet Planning"), and there were several others also worldwide. City planning is obviously easiest, as there are almost no physics involved, AEC also easy but problematic because the heterogeneous SW used (needing API's, needing a strong partner), and construction being the hardest (Think of AutoCAD vs Revit). Allia thought of the Neufert standards as design patterns. Good goal, but by far not proprietary and revolutionary. Most of us working on that had far more than Allia.

Going to Google with this plan is also extremely naive. There's only AutoDESK to go to with such a project.

An earlier overview is that article https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8048779/google-x-eli-atti... A current take on city planning is the City Engine: http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine/free-trial

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#44

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:21 AM UTC

saimiam wrote: post #34

paul7986 wrote: post #23

I had a similar experience with Google; a mutual NDA was signed as seen here https://goo.gl/K9Wd1U . - Feb 2013 created SpeakerBlast; turn multiple devices into one sync speaker via a URL - March 2013 Samsung released the Galaxy 4 with Group Play (same concept as SpeakerBlast) - April 2013 Google/Motorola emails/calls me asking would I sell SpeakerBlast for inclusion into the Moto X - May 2013 Fly out from Baltimore…

> Things need to change!!! How should things change? I genuinely feel for you so keep the rest of what I'm going to say at arms distance. The way I see it, you are essentially asking people not to learn from each other. Software is not basic science where, if you discover a process or a particle, you are putting into words something outside the human brain. Software (mathematical formulations aside) describes how the…

I don't think the problem would be the learning in this scenario. The problem would be not compensating the educator.

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#45

Post by saimiam » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:24 AM UTC

arkj wrote: post #40

saimiam wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things need to change!!! How should things change? I genuinely feel for you so keep the rest of what I'm going to say at arms distance. The way I see it, you are essentially asking people not to learn from each other. Software is not basic science where, if you discover a process or a particle, you are putting into words something outside the human brain. Software (mathematical formulations aside) describes how the…

>The way I see it, you are essentially asking people not to learn from each other. I dont think he sayimg anything like that. There's a big difference between learning from each other and baiting you for your secret sauce.

1. Baiting is learning though.

2. "Baiting" is an opinion. I have no doubt OP got baited in his view but to Google, it might have been simply the asking of questions.

Maybe the questions were asked to make sure OP's technology was sufficiently different and inferior to whatever they themselves launched. If that were the case, it wouldn't be baiting. It'd be discovery.

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#46

Post by Top19 » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:25 AM UTC

Wow this story is shocking. I want to point out it’s quite believable if you look at this situation historically. Microsoft was known for doing this exact same thing. Their tactic was to wine and dine startups, give them the “big megacorp company treatment”, ask them to divulge just a little of how they were doing what they were doing. Then they would go back to Seattle, put out an identical product 6 weeks later, and dare the company to sue them. Also another tactic of theirs was to get their executives or those on their payroll onto the boards of startups, sometimes as advisors, and then feed info back to MSFT. Their behavior has changed a ton from then I want to point out, but now looks like Google has picked up where they left off...

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#47

Post by Sylos » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:25 AM UTC

jamilbk wrote: post #26

The problem with “Don’t be evil” is that evil is subjective.

Also, that it's not legally binding.

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#48

Post by johansch » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:26 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #39

paul7986 wrote: post #23

I had a similar experience with Google; a mutual NDA was signed as seen here https://goo.gl/K9Wd1U . - Feb 2013 created SpeakerBlast; turn multiple devices into one sync speaker via a URL - March 2013 Samsung released the Galaxy 4 with Group Play (same concept as SpeakerBlast) - April 2013 Google/Motorola emails/calls me asking would I sell SpeakerBlast for inclusion into the Moto X - May 2013 Fly out from Baltimore…

This is the price of weakening patents. When corporations were afraid of patent holders, this happened less. The great fear was, you infringe a patent, you get shut down. That happened to Kodak when they tried to get into instant photography in violation of Polaroid's patents. Kodak was forced to exit the instant camera business within 30 days and buy back every instant camera they'd sold.

This seems to have started around 1976/1977. Polaroid wasn't exactly a tiny startup then, so they had the financial resources to defend themselves.

https://books.google.com/books?id=6TTbCT64seEC&pg=PA91&lpg=P...

"In 1977, (Polaroid) revenues reached $1 billion"

The lawsuit took 15 years to settle:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/16/business/kodak-settles-wit...

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#49

Post by zby » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:28 AM UTC

OK - so what is the take away for startups? It is common that investors don't want to sign NDAs. And it is mostly OK, because in most cases the investor does only investing and he cannot use the ideas on his own, so his best bet is to make a deal with the startup, but if your potential investor is a big corpo - then you need a lot more careful.

Re: Google accused of racketeering in lawsuit

#50

Post by trhway » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:28 AM UTC

if that is an internal culture at Google, that may somewhat explain how Levandowski and his people may not personally felt any duty to follow basic morals toward Google. I mean i'm not trying to justify their actions, and personally i find Levandowski's actions smelling pretty bad, i'm just saying that at the system level it seems to be karma at work.