Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool 332
A two-count lawsuit filed by Chicago company LimitNone alleges that Google misappropriated trade secrets and violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws when it developed "Google Email Uploader" which competes with LimitNone's "gMove" application.
"Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil' but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,'" said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement.
The lawsuit was filed by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system.
That's plausible (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean it only makes sense that the large company employing the best engineers in the world would risk everything to steal a product they could write in a day, right?
Re:Get Rich (Score:5, Interesting)
A successful lawsuit against Google could be like the small pebble that causes a landslide.
$1B is a ridiculous amount of money for this lawsuit, but even at $10M, a successful suit would bring more lawsuits out of the woodwork.
And I'm willing to bet that once it happened, Microsoft would be more than happy to finance as many as possible.
Typical Large Company (Google's PR)? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to admit if the allegations are true then Google probably has one of the best Marketing/PR departments in the world.
I've been in the IT industry for a long time and I can still remember Microsoft's public image was similar many, many years ago! (anyone remember a small company called 'Stac'?) and it's now happening again, same 'strategy' - different company!
Initially I was skeptical when I started reading the article (I know, I know I have just broken a Slashdot cardinal rule) when I read this:
"..the potential for 50 million users - was "just too big to come from someone else" and that "this is how Google operates.."
quoted from Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program
Moral of the story?
It's ok to be a 'partner' to a large company as long as your product is not *too* popular or successful.
Anyone partnering with a large company should learn lessons from this - remember a large companie's main responsibility is to it's shareholders - they are the people who want a return on thier investment and usually at any cost!
So, where's the NDA and NCA (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, a smile and a handshake is fine if you're doing a $300 quick job with a repeat customer, but if a billion dollars is on the line there needs to be paperwork. Now, if it is reasonable to presume that there wasn't much to be made on this at the beginning, then it is also reasonable to believe the change of heart on the part of Google is based on "new" information as to the viability of the product. If there are trade secrets involved, there should (must?) be an NDA, or it's not really a trade secret. And where do consumers come in this (i.e. the consumer fraud complaint)? It sounds like the consumers are going to make out to the tune of $29 per user.
I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA does not say there was a "non-compete" agreement which would be crazy to agree to, since in fact this is easy to duplicate. It talks vaguely of "assurances". The CEO claims their technology was "stolen" but then the article says a competing product was released, not theirs.
Looks like they had the benefit of big-time promotion *for almost a year* before Google had anything else to show. They made quite a bit of money they wouldn't have otherwise I am sorry... sounds like someone was hoping for a payday and is just angry now.
Re:Get Rich (Score:3, Interesting)
There was one case (in Mississipi I think) where the dolts on the jury
added an extra zero to the amount requested by the plaintiffs. Pretty
much everyone objected to that verdict but it ultimately stood up
because that's what the jury wrote on a small piece of paper.
None of the appeals judges were willing to slay that sacred cow...
Googles Rep (Score:2, Interesting)
I just wanted to point something out. This is the difference of Googles rep and MS's rep. If MS did this, we'd be all over them searching for everything we could slant in their favor.
Re:Get Rich (Score:5, Interesting)
Emphasis mine. How much money would Google make from their free product? Of course, reading more finds that the claim is that Google is integrating this into their paid product (Google Apps Premier) rather than giving it away for free. Perhaps you knew that, but it wasn't evident in what you said.
Incidentally, there is a better written article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 [cnet.com]
In particular, that article points out that LimitNone is claiming that it divulged technical secrets to Google that Google then used in making its own product. Also, Google apparently changed its Google Apps interface in May of 2008, which caused the gMove product to break. That's apparently the violation of Illinois consumer laws.
Is that related to the differences between Standard and Premier? Apparently Standard does not allow for third party integrations but Premier does. [google.com] Did Google tell LimitNone that the free version would always support gMove? If so, that will be interesting, as it will help to set expectations around how long Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. have to maintain API compatibility when they want to break it. All of them offer programs like this that allow third party developers to create apps that integrate with their platform. How long are those integrations warranted to work?
The real problem here is not in the relationship between Google and LimitNone but between Google and users of Apps standard edition. Google had been encouraging its users to pay $19 for this product but the functionality no longer works. Further, it apparently stopped working as a result of changes that Google made. If it turns out that it stopped working because Google started charging for something that it previously offered for free, should Google pay back the $19 to users?
Re:My philosophy (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're a subscriber, and subscribe to the RSS feed, it will show you posts in the mysterious future. It will disable comments, until "the mysterious future." But the RSS feed clearly states the exact time comments will be available (in the future).
enjoy.
LimitNone's only hope (Score:3, Interesting)
LimitNone's only hope is language in a written contract promising that Google won't compete with their product. Absent that, they're toast. Let's face it, their product isn't much. There's nothing in it that hasn't been well-known and in wide use for the last 30 years, and thus can't be a trade secret. Google obviously knows their own formats and APIs for loading messages into gMail. In fact they had to have created them before LimitNone's product existed, if they hadn't LN couldn't have created their product at all. The file formats and things like Exchange server APIs aren't exactly secret. Copying all messages from one to the other is the same basic copy loop that's been used for 40-some years: open input; while not eof(input) do read(input); write(output); done; close input. A loop to iterate through folders and some recursion to handle subfolders, I was doing that in high school. Look and feel? LimitNone's probably using the standard tree-view widgets provided by the system, so yes Google's app will look like theirs because both of them look like the standard system widgets. That's assuming the apps allow message-level selectivity, if they limit it to folder-level or "everything on this server", the UI's even more generic. And the concept of importing mail messages from an old client into a new one? Hardly new. Mail clients have been importing other client's mailboxes since as long as there've been mail clients. Thunderbird has been doing it IIRC for a couple years now, well before LimitNone's product was created.
LimitNone's problem is that they're trying to charge $29 for a basic one-shot function that comes standard with most mail clients and that frankly could be hacked up by a single programmer in a few weeks of full-time work.
Re:Get Rich (Score:3, Interesting)
Google gets sued by $foo_small_co:
Random Slashdotter: Damn legal system makes everyone thing they can ge rich by suing.
Microsoft gets sued by $bar_small_co:
Random Slashdotter: See?! I told you M$ was teh evil look how they tried to step on the small guy and squash them like a BUG under their giant boot of Orwellian global dominance!!!!
Slashdot gets sued by Random Slashdotter:
*World implodes*
Re:Get Rich (Score:3, Interesting)
The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.
I'm not a doctor by any means, but I have had some biology and physics courses. There just isn't enough stored energy in a cup of coffee to do this.
A first degree burn has redness, swelling and sensitivity (think sunburn); A second degree burn shows blistering; third degree involves destruction of the outer layers of skin and charring of the flesh. At worst she would have experienced mild to moderate second degree burning.
Re:Get Rich (Score:5, Interesting)
McDonald's put special holes in their building to sell stuff to people in cars. The put scalding-hot coffee in flimsy, slippery cups with flimsy, slippery lids, and then give you cream and sugar separately. And they do this to early-morning, pre-caffeine zombies. It should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you do this millions of times a day, some people are going to end up in the hospital without expecting it.
VW plans for normal operator error in a host of ways. Good visibility. Good lights. Good user feedback through gauges, car feel, and road feel. Brakes and steering built to handle emergencies. Seat belts, frames, air bags, and a bunch of other little touches optimized for survival after error.
McDonald's, on the other hand, even after being told that they were putting people in the hospital unnecessarily, shrugged and carried on.
Re:Get Rich (Score:1, Interesting)
Do you really think that google needed to "steal functionality" to import mail? Into their own mail system?
Yeah, I thought so.