How Google Steals Ideas From Entrepreneurs
By Sarah Dunn and Anthony Harvard
A recent article in The New York Times called: “How Larry Page’s Obsessions Became Google’s Business” describes how Google Boss Larry Page covertly attends technology conferences in order to get ideas from entrepreneurs. He does not seem to ever pay those entrepreneurs, for the technology he takes from them, and makes billions of dollars off of at Google.
Google Boss Eric Schmidt just spent over $1 Billion to try to lobby Congress to change the patent laws in order to make patents for entrepreneurs nearly illegal, and to try to make patents almost entirely unenforceable, so that Google would not have to pay for the technology it steals. Google seems to love killing the American dream.
Google spent millions of dollars to nominate, lobby for, influence and place it’s top lawyer in charge of the U.S. Patent Office. Now Google’s “inside-man” makes sure that patents, that Google is infringing, are either turned down or, in some cases, have their approvals reversed.
Google’s motto seems to be: “Why Compete When You Can Cheat”. This is a far more relevant motto than ‘Don’t be evil”.
The New York Times article, and hundreds of stories from entrepreneurs, describes how Mr. Page cuddles up to technologists in ordinary street wear, does not identify himself, and Hoover’s up their innovations for his company. The article, details the following:
“Three years ago, Charles Chase, an engineer who manages Lockheed Martin’s nuclear fusion program, was sitting on a white leather couch at Google’s Solve for X conference when a man he had never met knelt down to talk to him.
They spent 20 minutes discussing how much time, money and technology separated humanity from a sustainable fusion reaction — that is, how to produce clean energy by mimicking the sun’s power — before Mr. Chase thought to ask the man his name.
“I’m Larry Page,” the man said. He realized he had been talking to Google’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive.
“He didn’t have any sort of pretension like he shouldn’t be talking to me or ‘Don’t you know who you’re talking to?’” Mr. Chase said. “We just talked.”
The article also reveals the show-boating of how Mr. Page likes to “ ignore the main stage and follow the scrum of fans and autograph seekers who mob him in the moments he steps outside closed doors.”
The article goes on to show that.. “ He is a regular at robotics conferences and intellectual gatherings like TED. Scientists say he is a good bet to attend Google’s various academic gatherings, like Solve for X and Sci Foo Camp, where he can be found having casual conversations about technology or giving advice to entrepreneurs. Mr. Page is hardly the first Silicon Valley chief with a case of intellectual wanderlust, but unlike most of his peers, he has invested far beyond his company’s core business and in many ways has made it a reflection of his personal fascinations.”
Further Page has “… said on several occasions that he spends a good deal of time researching new technologies, focusing on what kind of financial or logistic hurdles stand in the way of them being invented or carried out. His presence at technology events, while just a sliver of his time, is indicative of a giant idea-scouting mission that has in some sense been going on for years but is now Mr. Page’s main job.”
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Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, wearing Google Glass. Credit Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Then the article grows dark, it says: “Many former Google employees who have worked directly with Mr. Page said his managerial modus operandi was to TAKE new technologies or product ideas and generalize them to as many areas as possible. Why can’t Google Now, Google’s predictive search tool, be used to predict everything about a person’s life? Why create a portal to shop for insurance when you can create a portal to shop for every product in the world?
But corporate success means corporate sprawl, and recently Google has seen a number of engineers and others leave for younger rivals like Facebook and start-ups like Uber. Mr. Page has made personal appeals to some of them, and, at least in a few recent cases, has said he is worried that the company has become a difficult place for entrepreneurs, according to people who have met with him.”
“People who have worked with Mr. Page say that he tries to guard his calendar, avoiding back-to-back meetings and leaving time to read, research and see new technologies that interest him.”
The articles details Page’s under-cover intelligence gathering: “ People who work with Mr. Page or have spoken with him at conferences say he tries his best to blend in, ..” “ The scope of his curiosity was apparent at Sci Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only conference that is sponsored by Google, O’Reilly Media and Digital Science.
The article goes on to reveal that Google was forced to engage in a break-up, into a front operation called “Alphabet” in order to try to create overt shell companies to build buffers from the Tsunami of legal actions that are coming after it.:
“Of course, for every statement Mr. Page makes about Alphabet’s technocorporate benevolence, you can find many competitors and privacy advocates holding their noses in disgust. Technology companies like Yelp have accused the company of acting like a brutal monopolist that is using the dominance of its search engine to steer consumers toward Google services, even if that means giving the customers inferior information.
In fact, the company’s main business issue seems to be that it is doing too well. Google is facing antitrust charges in Europe, along with investigations in Europe and the United States. Those issues are now mostly Mr. Pichai’s to worry about, as Mr. Page is out looking for the next big thing.”
“It is hard to imagine how even the most ambitious person could hope to revolutionize so many industries. And Mr. Page, no matter how smart, cannot possibly be an expert in every area Alphabet wants to touch.
His method is not overly technical. Instead, he tends to focus on how to make a sizable business out of whatever problem this or that technology might solve. Leslie Dewan, a nuclear engineer who founded a company that is trying to generate cheap electricity from nuclear waste, also had a brief conversation with Mr. Page at the Solve For X conference.
She said he questioned her on things like modular manufacturing and how to find the right employees.
“He doesn’t have a nuclear background, but he knew the right questions to ask,” said Dr. Dewan, chief executive of Transatomic Power. “‘Have you thought about approaching the manufacturing in this way?’ ‘Have you thought about the vertical integration of the company in this way?’ ‘Have you thought about training the work force this way?’ They weren’t nuclear physics questions, but they were extremely thoughtful ways to think about how we could structure the business.”
Dr. Dewan said Mr. Page even gave her an idea for a new market opportunity that she had not thought of. Asked to be more specific, she refused. The idea was too good to share.”
Yet, Dr. Dewan did share, seduced by the understated encouragement of a top intelligence gathering officer: Larry Page.
Below, you will find a small sample of tens of thousands of blog articles and news articles discussing the overt experience of Google’s intellectual property theft. When you have a zillion billion dollars and own your own Senators, ethics do not seem to fall within range of your moral compass.
Entrepreneurs have charged that Google has overtly, stolen its video broadcasting technology, virtual reality systems, Internet balloons, search engine system, wireless technology and many other items. We spoke with technologists who showed us United States Government issued patents and communications that showed that they had designed, engineered, built, patent filed and launched a number of the technologies that Google now has filled their bank accounts from. Google’s financiers at Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures and other groups had come to them, looked at the technologies confidentially, under the guise of “maybe we’ll invest”, and then sent the technologies over to Google to build 100% clones of.
How hard is it to sue Google for patent infringement? With Google controlling the patent office and 80% of the technology law firms, the hapless entrepreneur is out-gunned.
Google even tried the lamest shell game in history by posting ads on technology blogs asking inventors to just send Google their patents and Google would look at them and offer a low-ball check if Google thought they might get in trouble. That ploy was universally mocked on the web.
Google remains a big, dumb, reckless billionaire’s toy with no regard for the individual. As a creator, your idea is Google’s to plunder. As a citizen, your privacy is Google’s to plunder. As the buyer of elected officials and federal agencies, the law is now Google’s bitch.
American FTC investigators wrote, in their report, that “Google is a threat to domestic innovation”. The European Union investigators have found “…Google to be a private out of control corporate government that has more power than the U.S. Government.”
It is time the FBI came in and shut that train down. Google is nothing but bad news for modern society and innovation.
