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Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

reuters.com

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Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#71

Post by goblin89 »

shanterer wrote: post #53
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

There's something Apple and Google and their ilk are much more afraid of than this lawsuit and, based on these shenanigans, it may be time. I found out last March why my manager at Google was adverse to me. I knew someone was pulling strings on him and I had thought that he was taking orders related to my criticism of the G+ direction (in fact, the G+ executives were, as far as I know, innocent) but it was actually b…

your history of compulsive megaposting across google's internal message boards, your university's message boards, autoadmit, hackernews and several other sites indicates low mental stability and a paranoid mindset. it's not hard to believe that you really are a low productivity troublesome employee, and that this explain your lack of career success.

Wouldn't any person that eagerly argues for unionization (regardless of professional field) indeed appear to other professionals as odd, mental, or having a hidden agenda?

Naturally, if working in our field yields pretty good money to most of us—regardless of how fairly we are treated—then why unionize? surely that must be just some weirdo's twisted communist ideals or some competitor's money behind.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#72

Post by danielweber »

sheepmullet wrote: post #68
danielweber wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it easy to believe him. He posts using his real name. If he is lying then ....well Google has an army of lawyers. Without taking any side here, this isn't indicative of much. One has to work very hard to be able to actually lose a libel or slander lawsuit in the US. And while it would be very easy for Google to start a lawsuit it knows it can't win just to pressure some guy to shut up, Google probably unders…

> Without taking any side here, this isn't indicative of much. I think it does up the ante. If a Google employee (or anyone who doesn't like him really) could catch him in a lie his reputation would be damaged as he is a "public figure". On the other hand if you caught me in a lie... well only around 5-6 people know who I am and I copied this nick off another bloke on a different forum because I thought it was cool.…

Whether he's a public figure is debatable (the Wiki article gives a good summary of the questions we'd need), but all it means for a defamation suit is that Google would not have to prove malice. There would be many other hurdles to clear.

IANAL.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#73

Post by marvin »

shanterer wrote: post #53
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

There's something Apple and Google and their ilk are much more afraid of than this lawsuit and, based on these shenanigans, it may be time. I found out last March why my manager at Google was adverse to me. I knew someone was pulling strings on him and I had thought that he was taking orders related to my criticism of the G+ direction (in fact, the G+ executives were, as far as I know, innocent) but it was actually b…

your history of compulsive megaposting across google's internal message boards, your university's message boards, autoadmit, hackernews and several other sites indicates low mental stability and a paranoid mindset. it's not hard to believe that you really are a low productivity troublesome employee, and that this explain your lack of career success.

Please post using your full name if you are going to make direct personal attacks at a named individual. It's very hard to take comments like this seriously.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#74

Post by [deleted] »

a3n wrote: post #56
beedogs wrote: post #5

Settlement seems low. Looks like every company involved ended up saving quite a bit of money, after all is said and done, with this little salary racket they had going.

"Settlement seems low." > Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel in 2010 settled a U.S. Department of Justice probe by agreeing not to enter into such no-hire deals in the future. The four companies had since been fighting the civil antitrust class action. This I think is actually the worst part, and all but guaranteed this settlement. "You guys were caught robbing banks. Don't do that again, 'K? Now get outta here." Too bad…

[deleted]

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#75

Post by marvin »

danielweber wrote: post #63
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

There's something Apple and Google and their ilk are much more afraid of than this lawsuit and, based on these shenanigans, it may be time. I found out last March why my manager at Google was adverse to me. I knew someone was pulling strings on him and I had thought that he was taking orders related to my criticism of the G+ direction (in fact, the G+ executives were, as far as I know, innocent) but it was actually b…

You are describing a professional society, like doctors or lawyers have. Also: * transparency in compensation. * protection against sharing of individual HR data (salaries, performance reviews) among companies, often used to keep pay down. Those two things are in contradiction.

These points are not in contradiction. You can publish anonymized salary information which gives other professionals accurate information about their market value while at the same time protecting employees against abuses of power where individual HR data becomes available to third parties.

For example, Tekna, the Norwegian Technical and scientific professionals' society, publishes annual (anonymized) salary surveys which are categorized by percentile, length of work experience and public vs. private sector. A software developers' "union" could easily provide similar statistics, perhaps organized by specialty. What you need to publish for transparency is enough information to ensure that new employees don't get a raw deal, not individualized information.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#76

Post by rayiner »

abalone wrote: post #16
malandrew wrote: post #15

Why in the world would those 64k employees take this offer? It was clear that they were going to pay for this and that a jury would be sympathetic. Was there really any chance that the amount gained could have be lower for the plaintiffs had this case gone to a jury trial? If not, then why didn't they go to trial?

It actually addresses this. The report explains that there's a chance the whole thing would have been invalidated by an appellate judge. Still, personally as a class member I would've pressed for more, and I bet it's because the firm has different incentives. They probably stand to get something on the order of $100M of that settlement. They're thinking, $100M in the hand is worth $1B in the bush. Especially since go…

First, the lawyers don't get to decide whether to settle, the lead plaintiffs do. Second, class members can opt-out of the settlement. As 'danielweber points out, nobody will do so because litigating against employers would be a huge black mark on their resume. That's the real kicker here.

As a general principle, I have serious concerns about the agency problems that exist in the class action system as currently structured. I think it's way too common for lead plaintiffs to settle for too little. However, in this case I think they and their lawyers did everyone a favor. Nobody would've pursued these cases individually, not even if they stood to get $30k. Every dollar the class plaintiffs recover above $0 is gravy.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#77

Post by gtirloni »

mseebach wrote: post #51
kumbasha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose my first question is... Why doesn't this union already exist?

Occam's razor answer: Because the vast majority of Silicon Valley engineers are happy enough with their working conditions, with their ability to find new work if their current gig goes belly up and confident that if a major conflict occurs, they can find the help they need (eg. a lawyer) in the open market.

While that's probably true and I think people should be happy with whatever makes them happy, it doesn't mean these engineers couldn't be much better off.

That being said, as an employee, I'm so afraid of unions screwing up that I can't make my mind between having an union vs. these periodic lawsuits/settlements in order to keep the balance. It seems every example of a union being a good thing (like the Norway example mentioned here) feels like a bug in the matrix.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#78

Post by talmand »

hga wrote: post #55
georgemcbay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, pretty terrible outcome. Lawyers get a huge chunk of money for relatively little effort, the actual plaintiffs get like a couple of thousand each, and the companies pay out an amount that is likely far less than the amount they saved by the illegal collusion and is also not sufficiently punitive to impact their future decisions to do similar things.

The lawyers, who are fronting the money to pursue this, have to balance risk and reward. Anything can happen when it's put before a jury, including a deadlock from one recalcitrant juror followed by a retrial. Getting to that point would be insanely expensive, likely years of discovery battles, deposition taking and all that (and Jobs, the apparent ringleader, is of course beyond mortal questioning and judgement). Th…

But who's risk and reward is being considered when the clients end up with very little?

If the result was such a pittance for the people affected by the actions, why bother in the first place? If the result isn't going to be punitive to the companies then what's stopping them from doing it again in the future?

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#79

Post by talmand »

zaroth wrote: post #27

Maybe the only bright side I see to this is, a red line has been drawn, a multi-million settlement is drawn out, and everyone knows if there is a next time the penalty would be even worse .

I would think the opposite. If this settlement goes through I would say that the cost of doing this type of business has been decided.

Re: Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit

#80

Post by shanterer »

marvin wrote: post #73
shanterer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your history of compulsive megaposting across google's internal message boards, your university's message boards, autoadmit, hackernews and several other sites indicates low mental stability and a paranoid mindset. it's not hard to believe that you really are a low productivity troublesome employee, and that this explain your lack of career success.

Please post using your full name if you are going to make direct personal attacks at a named individual. It's very hard to take comments like this seriously.

posts about his autoadmit and carleton adventures: http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=306628 http://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2372636

wikipedia sockpuppets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isomorphic/Minions_of_the_...

blatant sockpuppetry on quora: http://qr.ae/rPxvn http://qr.ae/rPxCq

his obsessive anti-google and anti-startup posting on hackernews speaks for itself.

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