Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool

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.

The Amazing Karnak

.... says that the majority of posts will be about which side is screwing who despite no one on Slashdot having any clue about what happened at the meetings between the two companies.

Check back later for the results of the prediction.

Re:The Amazing Karnak

Some of us will get witty replies in, we'll probably get a couple "In Soviet America" jokes, a few flamers talking about privacy invasions and at least one sad, months-late attempt at a Rick Roll.

I for one welcome our new prediction toting cynical overlords.

Re:The Amazing Karnak

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.

Re:The Amazing Karnak

Two words, only smucks sue for billions when their product is worth thousands.

Two questions:
What were the "two words".
And is a "smuck" one who makes Smuckers jelly?

Whats their contact information?

Perhaps I should sue them for selling a product that did what the Perl script I wrote to import ten years' worth of archives into GMail did several months before the beta was even open to anyone but friends and family of people at Google.

You know, because its really a non-obvious idea.

Typical Large Company (Google's PR)?

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!

LimitNone = :'(

I find it rather ridiculous that LimitNone actually believes that an Email client migration product is such an advanced piece of software that Google with its legions of developers and mounds of cash couldn't cook one up on its own. The article cites that LimitNone claims that the 'gMove' application was a trade secret..it wasn't even patented. This is another huge whiner case. This company has a product that has a snowball's chance in hell of competing with a 'free' Google product, yet they still expect that they are somehow entitled to money for it because Google went back on its word (not contractually..just its "word").

I was sitting in on a product development meeting a few months back and the discussion came up on how to be viable in today's market. One of the big questions in online application entrepeneuring is: How can we remain viable against companies like Google?.. Companies like Google that can cook up the same product with all the same features in a fraction of the time. It seems that if LimitNone had applied some common sense to its product lines, it wouldn't run into the problem of oh, say, Google extending the functionality of one of its already existing applications. Whoops.

Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.

This is ust another case of litigation over innovation. I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?

Better posting on CNET

CNET is also covering this at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html [cnet.com]

It provides additional details, including: "And in May 2008, Google changed its user interface, breaking gMove compatibility and forcing the company to provide customer refunds."

captcha: nonzero (that's almost like LimitNone)

Re:You've got a little evil there on your mouth...

What article? Business wire is a press release service. The "article" authors are listed at the bottom: Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the lawyers who are suing google.

Re:You've got a little evil there on your mouth...

Wait, you think Slashdot editors actually read the article? I'd say "you must be new here", but then somebody with a 4-digit UID would be legally obligated to come over and bitch-slap me.

Re:You've got a little evil there on your mouth...

*slap*

You're welcome.

Re:My philosophy

Dear Anonymous Coward,

The author of popular first-posting tool Bone-O-Rama, cyborg_monkey, has filed a lawsuit against you individually and against any entity under which you conduct business alleging infringement of Bone-O-Rama technology.

cyborg_monkey holds that you invited him into a technology sharing agreement the terms of which prevent you from independently using, allowing others to use, or cause to be use, any first posting technology, whether derived from or distinct from, that same technology as used by Bone-O-Rama. Further allegation include but are not limited to: Repeated inappropriate remarks by you about Bone-O-Rama placed on popular blogs, your garbling of the Bone-O-Rama trademark "First Post!" (such garblings include "fr0st ps0t!" and the like), and also cyborg_monkey has a general dissatisfaction with the way you conduct yourself just in general, and we think you registered the Slashdot account cydorg_money, which is obviously trademark dillution.

You'd be wise to post a retraction while there is still time, and apologize for your affronts to decency.

Re:Get Rich

You really should have read the article. If what's said in the article is even partially true, it sure looks like Google acted in a pretty sleazy fashion. Apparently they were willing to boost this company's product until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free. It's like Netscape/IE all over again.

Re:Get Rich

Apparently they were willing to boost this company's product until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free

Ah yes, Google made a killing off this deal! The board room discussion must have gone something like this:

Product Analyst: "Look at this gMove product, they are selling hundreds, maybe even thousands of copies. They're making a lot of money! We should do something about it."

VP of Development: "Okay, let's develop our own."

Accountant: "How much should we charge for it?"

Product Analyst: "Well, the makers of gMove believe that they could sell 50 million copies for $29.99- that's like 1 billion dollars!" (said while holding pinky finger to mouth, of course)

VP of Sales: "We could probably sell even more copies if it was cheaper"

Accountant steps out to go to the bathroom.

Product Analyst: "Imagine how many copies we could sell if it was free!!"

VP of Development: "Okay, let's do it! That'll really show 'em!"

Re:Get Rich

1. It's press release by the plaintiff's lawyers.

2. "until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free." WTF? That doesn't even make sense. We could make a fortune if we had this product, lets give it away for free and we'll all be rich!!! No. I'm not sure if Google cares _how_ the conversion is done, just that the users come to Google at some point in the transaction. A converter, while convenient if it's free, is just as valuable if somebody else sells it...as long as it it used.

Re:Get Rich

As you point out, Google's profit interest is in more migrations from Outlook. That means that anyone offering a Outloog migration tool is to Google's good. However, someone offering a converter for $$$ raises a barrier: some people won't pay for a converter; if they can't migrate for free they won't use Gmail. How do you overcome that barrier? Offer a converter for free. Yeah, the guys trying to sell their converter get shafted. But Google wins by getting more users who migrate off of Outlook.

That's the motivation point you seem to be neglecting. That's the ??? before "Profit!". In your words, that's WTF.

And yeah, I know, that's the story according to the plaintiff's legal team. We've unofficially heard one side of the story. (Yeah, unofficially. As you point out, it's a press release, not the actual filings.) So, there's obviously a lot more story to come. I hope Groklaw follows this one.

Re:Get Rich

Well, since LimitNone's own website says that they are "...a leading provider of applications that leverage the revolutionary iPhone and other mobile devices to deliver communication solutions and GPS location-based services to mobile workers." this seems to be a bit of a failed business agreement rather than a stolen core of their business plan. Is it kind of sleazy to steal somebodies idea and make it better? Perhaps, but it depends on a lot of other factors. The talks sounded like they started over a year ago. That's a long time on the internet - maybe Google needed it done now. And conversion software isn't exactly a "novel" idea.

They may be truly wronged, but my money is on the likelihood that they put in the order for the new yacht and private plane before they had shipping product and paying customers and now they're figuring to get the phantom money they might have had by fishing with expensive lawyers.

Re:Get Rich

Sleazy? Maybe. That depends on the he-said she-said details of the "I promise I won't" allegations. The only thing that matters is in the third to last paragraph of the press release:

"Google Email Uploader" steals gMove's look, feel and functionality

Microsoft proved you can't steal look and feel (from Apple, anyway). Stealing functionality sounds like reverse engineering to me.

I think it comes down to a quote from Richard Marx:

It don't mean nothing, the words that they say ... It don't mean nothing till you sign it on the dotted line.

Re:Get Rich

Apparently they were willing to boost this company's product until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free.

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?

Talk about a knee jerk reaction...

If even half of their claims are founded in truth then this is a worthy lawsuit and Google acted in an 'evil' manner. I'll clue you in on something: not all lawsuits are bad. The mechanism exists for a reason.

Then again at least you admitted that you are totally uninformed on the subject since you didn't read the (short) article.

Re:Talk about a knee jerk reaction...

You do realize you didn't read an article either, right?

Its a press-release. By the lawyers. Who are filing the lawsuit. How much of that $1B do you think they'll keep?

Re:Get Rich

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.

Re:Get Rich

$1B is a ridiculous amount of money for this lawsuit

I'm guessing the amount is based on this (from TFA):

The lawsuit alleges the tool, which was originally named "MY GRATE" was later renamed, at Google's insistence, "gMove". Though the product retailed for $29, Google asked that LimitNone sell it to Google's customers for $19.

and

According to the complaint, Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program, told LimitNone that the potential for 50 million users - was "just too big to come from someone else" and that "this is how Google operates."

50 mil * $19 = $950 million

Re:Get Rich

If you can't get rich by making a worthy product, then get rich by suing someone. (No, I didn't read the article, but we all know this is the new way of business for most companies - sue their way to wealth.)

If you developed and spent money on a product that you felt was stolen, wouldn't you seek compensation for that loss? I'm not saying the $1B figure is reasonable, but regardless, if Google did what the accuser says, then at least they must make a fight for it.

Obviously, the product is interesting if Google supposedly wanted to steal it.

Re:Get Rich

Offtopic, but that "old-lady vs McDonalds" lawsuit was actually valid, though it was taken by the tort-reform people and manipulated to seem like a silly lawsuit.

McDonalds had been warned several times by the FDA to lower the temperature of their coffee, as several people each year were severely burned by it. The woman was in the passenger seat, her son was driving, and they had pulled off to the side of the drive-thru so she could put sugar in the coffee. When opening the lid, the cup slipped and spilled on to her lap.

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.

She then contacted McDonalds, explaining the situation to them, and asked them to reimburse part of her medical bills (for burn treatment and skin grafts). They offered her $500. Since her bills were quickly climbing into the high tens of thousands of dollars, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses.

It was the jury that decided medical expenses were not enough, and awarded her punitive damages (to punish McDonalds) totaling one day's revenue in coffee sales. McDonalds appealed the decision, and an appellate judge overturned the punitive damages. She ended up getting somewhere around $200,000, which barely covered her medical expenses up to that point.

Sorry, that was very off topic, but that case is misused as an example for tort reform so often I felt it needed to be stated. There are other ridiculous cases, sure, but that really isn't one of them. More info here. [centerjd.org]