James Damore et al v. Google LLC (2017)

[AnOminous]

According to the article, the remaining plaintiffs in court are suing over discrimination in not getting hired, not their workplace treatment.

Next step in completely eliminating all worker's rights is making you sign an arbitration agreement even to get an interview. Then they could literally just say "we aren't hiring whites/blacks/Jews/whatever" and then if you complained, send you to their rigged "neutral" arbitrator, who since they know what side their bread's buttered on, will never rule against what are effectively their owners.

 

[Xarpho]

It is absolutely true that they've cornered the market on OS and certain software; clearly if stopping that was the goal of the Antitrust then the courts failed to deliver. Microsoft had potential to eclipse the market entirely but that was stopped by the actions mentioned prior, none of which were beneficial even if they weren't harsh enough by certain standards (including my own), but the things they said they wanted to have happen were enforced to the letter and in short order.
Check out this analytic comparison of EU and US Antitrust law by Eleanor M. Fox, an actual expert in the field. She makes the case I'm making about the severity and breadth of the US' ability Antitrust law, but there is a big caveat: strict standards must be met to deploy the proverbial nuclear options. To my NAL eyes, before intervention Microsoft definitely qualified and they got a bit of a bunker-buster instead of the fat bomb they were due. After intervention they probably still qualified, but clearly at least the one judge disagrees, so the courts eased off the trigger.

I've probably been unclear, so let me state my point outright: The reason U.S. Antitrust law looks weak is not because the limits of power are weak but because the present-day standards and precedent for enforcement are so restrictive that those limits are not being reached, or even thought about.
More importantly: so far as I am aware, the laws on the books are one in the same with the laws that broke up AT&T in 1982 and actually stronger than the ones responsible for a great deal of violent dismantling in the early 20th century. Such actions could be viewed as the strongest possible Antitrust measure short of arresting and executing everyone in management, and I am not aware of any parallel in European regulatory history, or even pre-EU Antitrust in Europe. If you are aware of something like this, or of any change made to the laws that somehow neutered them between the early 80's and now, please, please share. I don't have the expertise or time to track down that sort of high-impact minutia, especially if it's been intentionally held far from prying (voting) eyes.
I've been going back and forth on this topic in several threads now and I am 100% happy to be proven wrong and move on with it if something that I'm saying is clearly or demonstrably wrong; probably won't push the Microsoft argument as a favorable one again. The problem with leaving this discussion to rot is that the next viable alternative I see proposed to "fix the courts" is to "fix the laws," and I'm generally hesitant to let any new laws get signed if the ones we have now are already strict as hell and simply not enforced. It's the same argument against new gun control laws or immigration laws, where everything going wrong is due to extremely negligent enforcement of the laws that already exist.

It's a misconception that they're only looking at market share, which is a common thread for monopoly breakups. For AT&T specifically, what the government wanted to do was to break up the vertical integration AT&T had, because they actually manufactured telephones as well under their Western Electric subsidiary (legally, up until this time, your telephone, should you be in AT&T territory, wasn't legally yours--Western Electric rented it to you). AT&T didn't want to lose their cash cow, so they spun off some of their operating companies as independent companies. Vertical integration is one of the reasons why the AT&T/TimeWarner deal faced scrutiny, if AT&T should own both TV channels (Turner Broadcasting System) and the service itself (DirecTV). Same thing for Microsoft, it wasn't that they had 95% (or whatever, can't remember the exact numbers) of the desktop OS market share, it involved the integration of Windows and Internet Explorer, which they almost lost had an appeals court not overturned the ruling on a technicality, allowing Microsoft to draft a compromise that would keep it solvent as one company.

 

[Wallace]

Here's an interesting leak from over on Reddit, where someone is talking about how badly Google bungled the situation. I can't verify it though.

EDIT: Archived link

 

[AnOminous]

This stuff does have the ring of truth to it. I hate to say for sure, because a lot of times these anons may be people who actually do know something but pad out what they know with other stuff, but it really rings true with that outrageous bullshit NLRB memo, which I think was discussed here.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nlrb-decision-james-damore-lawsuit-google/

Seriously, this memo is garbage and reads like a press release Google itself would be ashamed to release so put it in someone else's mouth.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Here's an interesting leak from over on Reddit, where someone is talking about how badly Google bungled the situation. I can't verify it though.

View attachment 634739 View attachment 634740

Please link and archive

 

[robobobo]

Too good to be true. Fake. It reads like the Illuminati doing a press release on how they were the second gunman for the Kennedy assassination.

 

[AnOminous]

Too good to be true. Fake. It reads like the Illuminati doing a press release on how they were the second gunman for the Kennedy assassination.

Damore himself says it contains details only he or someone at Google would know. So it very well may be someone at Google (or Damore himself or someone friendly to him posting with or without his knowledge).

 

[RodgerDodger]

The Dragonfly bit is rather telling. That isn't something just anyone would know. As Damore himself said only 100 people knew of it. And as has been observed while Damore knew of it, he kept that info very private. So whoever drafted this is either one of those 100 (most likely a member of Damore's team), someone higher in the organization with awareness of the project, or it's a plant by Damore himself. Because even after the lid blew off Dragonfly, even casual employees would not know who the 100 individuals inside the company were that knew of and worked on it. And with Damore long gone, his name would not be on any current rumors regarding it. The only people who would know he was involved were himself, his fellow 100 team members, and the Google legal and HR management team doing clean up over the Damore mess and assessing potential risks.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

So this particular lawsuit is deader than dead, right? But now we're tracking other lawsuits that kind of reference the Damore situation? Just trying to keep track, this one is very interesting to me.

 

[AnOminous]

So this particular lawsuit is deader than dead, right? But now we're tracking other lawsuits that kind of reference the Damore situation? Just trying to keep track, this one is very interesting to me.

Unless some magic happens and the government decides to start going after these bullshit arbitration agreements that effectively shred all employee rights, yes.

 

[DragoonSierra]

The Dragonfly bit is rather telling. That isn't something just anyone would know. As Damore himself said only 100 people knew of it. And as has been observed while Damore knew of it, he kept that info very private. So whoever drafted this is either one of those 100 (most likely a member of Damore's team), someone higher in the organization with awareness of the project, or it's a plant by Damore himself. Because even after the lid blew off Dragonfly, even casual employees would not know who the 100 individuals inside the company were that knew of and worked on it. And with Damore long gone, his name would not be on any current rumors regarding it. The only people who would know he was involved were himself, his fellow 100 team members, and the Google legal and HR management team doing clean up over the Damore mess and assessing potential risks.

A Damore plant would be dumb considering hes settled and he wont want to undo that and Damore has been pretty straight thus far. Also what would be the point? A shot in the dark that the government may unwedge itself out of bed and do something? He has more to lose than to gain.

 

[AnOminous]

A Damore plant would be dumb considering hes settled and he wont want to undo that and Damore has been pretty straight thus far.

He didn't settle. He was forced into arbitration against his will.

 

[DragoonSierra]

He didn't settle. He was forced into arbitration against his will.

So if he was socking could that hurt him? What do you think the chances are its a sock?

 

[Wallace]

Looks like the arbitration in the suit has fallen through, and it will be moving on to discovery.

While I don't envy the poor suckers assigned to that much document review, it's going to be interesting to see what shakes out.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Looks like the arbitration in the suit has fallen through, and it will be moving on to discovery.

While I don't envy the poor suckers assigned to that much document review, it's going to be interesting to see what shakes out.

Dead link. Anyone have a live one (or a tl;dr for us exceptional individuals in the audience?)

 

[altkiwi01]

Dead link. Anyone have a live one (or a tl;dr for us exceptional individuals in the audience?)

The working link is here.

tl:dr - after getting through some paper work, a judge has given permission for the case to move ahead to discovery. Google made a number of attempts to block this, and the judge struck those down.

 

[AnOminous]

The working link is here.

tl:dr - after getting through some paper work, a judge has given permission for the case to move ahead to discovery. Google made a number of attempts to block this, and the judge struck those down.

It doesn't look like Damore is still in it, though. I assume he was the only one who actually signed the arbitration agreement because they didn't hire the other two. Google can fix this and fuck anyone who even applies to them out of any rights they have by just forcing them to sign the arbitration agreement before they even can apply.

 

[mindlessobserver]

It doesn't look like Damore is still in it, though. I assume he was the only one who actually signed the arbitration agreement because they didn't hire the other two. Google can fix this and fuck anyone who even applies to them out of any rights they have by just forcing them to sign the arbitration agreement before they even can apply.

Thankfully the horses have already left the barn on that one. Cant close the door now. Discovery is going to be fun.

 

[Jaimas]

Thankfully the horses have already left the barn on that one. Cant close the door now. Discovery is going to be fun.

Couldn't come at a worse time for Google, either.

Good.

 

[altkiwi01]

It doesn't look like Damore is still in it, though. I assume he was the only one who actually signed the arbitration agreement because they didn't hire the other two.

Yeh, unfortunately. But, discovery will be pretty interesting. As long as Google dosen't find a way to keep it sealed away it should be fun.