DoJ Targets Tech Firms in Recruiting Collusion Probe

To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if this were true. The Department of Justice has opened a probe into possible collusion between some of the nation's largest tech companies with regards to the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees. According to the Washington Post, the report comes from two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

The probe is "industry-wide," and not limited to certain firms, although the tech giants Yahoo!, Google, Apple, and Genentech are among the firms listed in the article. Such collusion would violate antitrust law; by agreeing not to hire away each other's talent, companies could stifle competition and maintain their market power unfairly.

Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute told the Washington Post:

"This could be collusive restraint on trade, which could have a serious impact on competition."

Recent struggles over some high-ranking employees would indicate either that not all companies are "participating" in this collusion, if in fact it turns out to be true, or that sometimes they just can't work it out.

Last year, IBM sued Mark Papermaster to keep him from joining Apple. Then again, last month, IBM filed a lawsuit to prevent its former head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, from joining Dell. Google was sued by Microsoft in 2005 over Google's decision to hire Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft to run Google's research operation in China.

These things generally settle out of court. We'll see what dirt the DoJ manages to dig up as the investigation continues, however.