10 ms·
I met/had a similar experience with Google ATAP in 2013 (was Motorala ATAP then; Google recently bought them) though not for a job interview but to discuss work
by paul7986 8y ago
I met/had a similar experience with Google ATAP in 2013 (was Motorala ATAP then; Google recently bought them) though not for a job interview but to discuss working together to build our tech SpeakerBlast into the Moto X.
They asked if we ever thought about selling our technology to them before the meeting and at the meeting they baited us for how our tech worked saying we'd like to work with you tell us how it works. Once we did they left the room (Dugan's 2nd right hand man at the time and another) & 3 minutes later showed us the door saying the "race is on."
They have since been awarded patents for audio syncing across phones.
Many here will say that's just how Silicon Valley works.... takes advantage and stomps on the little guy innovators & their dreams. That's not professional and I met with many other companies like Samsung who acted with the utmost respect & professionalism towards us. Yet, Google whose motto is "Don't Be Evil," can't act in the same fashion?
- rkangel 8y agoThis is (one of the reasons) why you sign NDAs before discussing your technology.
- paul7986 8y agoA mutual NDA was signed as seen here https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf. We started SpeakerBlast in March 2013 & were meeting with Google in April 2013. We filed a provisional before the meeting & have a patent in the patent office.
- bspn 8y agoNDAs generally aren't worth the paper they're written on, but holy hell is that one a piece of work. The "residuals" concept basically gives them an open invite to copy anything they like so long as they didn't "intentionally memorize" it. Establishing intent is no easy task.
- rkangel 8y agoThe one thing that NDAs do extremely well, and the reason that companies like them signed is protect against prior art (the opposite of what we're talking about above). Without an NDA, if you've had a conversation with another company about your tech, then it has become public domain and you can be prevented from patenting. With NDA that problem doesn't exist.
- cma 8y agoConversation with a company doesn't count as prior art under new first-to-publish rules.
- eftychis 8y agoYes, establishing intent to memorize is near impossible. You would have to have something like written records (e.g. emails) stating the intent.
- paul7986 8y agoThe tech came a long way after meeting them... its now a web app driven by JS that plays, pauses, forwards, rewinds audio in sync as seen in this 2014 video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9itwp_wYc&index=20&list=UUMxo47JPsUD0w3yCaIqdgwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9itwp_wYc&index=20&list=UU... We revived it after seeing Google's April 2018 patent & are excited about finally getting it out to the public.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- edoo 8y agoAn NDA is only as good as the lawyers backing them up.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoUseless. Savvy inventors get at least a provisional patent application on file before meeting with predatory companies like goog, ms, intel, etc.
- paul7986 8y agoWe filed before the meeting and have a patent in the patent office.
- golergka 8y agoI'm pretty sure I've seen this on Silicon Valley. Have been telling people who don't work in IT that it's pretty much a document from season one, and they refuse to believe me.
- chrisweekly 8y agodocument -> documentary?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jhacker123 8y ago> Google whose motto is "Don't Be Evil," can't act in the same fashion? may be that's why they change it with doing right things (for own purpose) - https://bgr.com/2015/10/04/google-dont-be-evil-alphabet/ https://bgr.com/2015/10/04/google-dont-be-evil-alphabet/
- fredgrott 8y agoI do not mean to be mean but why on earth would you volunteer how your tech works when someone asks without any legal protection? Talk about clueless
- paul7986 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18567771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18567771
- ataturk 8y agoNo, it is clearly unprofesssional. But let's be honest: So much of what happens in corporate America today is highly unethical and unprofessional. The people who innovate have to be on the lookout for those who will gladly steal to get ahead. These people are the same little shits who did all the devious things to other people in grade school. My own experience with patents has been about the same: Circa 2000, under the direction of my thesis adviser, I invented a means to preview website pages in a sort of flip book. We demonstrated the tech at a conference later that year. I wanted the school to help us get it patented, but they wouldn't touch it because they didn't understand the value. They were just interested in patenting work out of the chemistry department, stuff that was more "real" I guess. Anyhow, just a couple years later I saw that a company had patented our work, despite the prior art. In another paper, I described a technique for how a web browser could display tiled snapshots of web pages you had already visited. What I was trying to do at the time was develop a way to capture headless screenshots of pages while crawling websites, but it was not such an easy thing to do at the time. The tiled "hey, check out what you already visited" didn't seem like that great of a use case at the time. I'm just happy I graduated and I pretty much gladly gave away all my ideas for free because honestly, it's not the ideas that matter, it's the examples. I feel for anyone who pours their heart into their work and then has to deal with these corporate scum who just feast on anything they can. I'm dealing with it again right now in the big data world at another giant corporation. I never really learn my lesson.
- village-idiot 8y agoGoogle’s motto was don’t be evil, they’ve clearly changed their mind.
- api 8y agoIgnore corporate claims such as "don't be evil." The problem isn't that those claims were lies. I'm sure Google's founders actually intended Google to "not be evil." The problem is that a corporation (or a government, university, church, fraternal organization, you name it) is made up of people. As such things get big they end up being made up of many, many people. Leaders change. Managers change. When an org gets big some of its people will be assholes because some people are assholes. Google has been through several CEOs and is a publicly traded company with the latter meaning that it's subject to market pressure and activist investors. It's also a company large enough and relevant enough to be a "national security" interest, making it likely subject to government and intelligence infiltration, pressure, and micromanagement.
- staticautomatic 8y agoSo it's OK for them to be evil?
- api 8y agoNo, I'm saying you shouldn't take the words of corporations the same way you take the words of an individual person. A corporation is not even a singular entity. Corporations can't have values because they're composed of a rotating set of minds that may not all hold those values and there is no way of guaranteeing values will be preserved into the future.
- nathan_f77 8y agoWow that's crazy. I didn't know they did stuff like that. Also I didn't know Google had patents for syncing audio across phones. I wonder if any of the mobile apps (like AmpMe [1]) have to pay some license fees. I once spent an evening researching the different apps that could sync audio across multiple devices [2]. I also wanted to build my own app, so tried to see if it would be possible (only if you have a jailbroken phone.) I just wanted to play the same audio on two pairs of AirPods. I found out that the Samsung Galaxy S9 has a Dual Audio feature, and the iPhone X can theoretically support this with Bluetooth 5.0. And the AmpMe app can sync audio across multiple phones. (I was also really surprised to find out that they're a pretty huge company with 20 full time employees.) [1] https://www.ampme.com https://www.ampme.com [2] https://www.evernote.com/l/ACo7ItT-pItKkZoYf0YJy0raGhN5255FRQc https://www.evernote.com/l/ACo7ItT-pItKkZoYf0YJy0raGhN5255FR...
- lavezzi 8y agoI mean I don't have any context, but surely this is a similar technology they have implemented with their Google Home speaker system?
- nathan_f77 8y agoOh, right! I've heard of Sonos, but I didn't know you could sync up multiple Google Home speakers. Yeah I guess that's probably the main reason for having those patents.
- dwild 8y ago> AmpMe app can sync audio across multiple phones. (I was also really surprised to find out that they're a pretty huge company with 20 full time employees.) The owner is a sketchy guy that made his money using adware (and still is) named Wajam. I guess AmpMe is what he hope will be his legit way to make money. Until it happens, it's probably bleeding money and is founded by his adware company.
- paul7986 8y agoDo you know AmpMe's owner?
- mathattack 8y agoDidn’t they spoof this in the Silicon Valley series?
- alistairSH 8y agoYes. Season 2, part of the Homicide Energy Drink plot-line. EndFrame lures PP into a meeting, ostensibly to discuss funding, but instead brain rapes[1] PP. 1 - Erlich's term, not mine.
- prolikewh0a 8y agobUt bUt...ChInA dOeS iP tHeFt
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Also for repeatedly posting flamebait and ignoring our requests to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- prolikewh0a 8y agoCan you point me to the requests to stop? I've seen exactly one, a long time ago. I'm not personally attacking people, and I do contribute here with a positive upvote score. I don't see the issue.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17807056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17807056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17767666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17767666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486112 But the main issue is using HN primarily for ideological or political battle. That's directly against the spirit of this site, and destroys it more insidiously than incivility does. Positive vote scores, alas, aren't an indicator of whether comments are good for HN or not. The most indignant and ideological comments routinely get upvoted. That's one reason they're insidious.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoThis honestly seems to be an issue with what my personal opinions are about certain topics. I do not "flame bait", I am serious in my positions and don't seek any type of nefarious response. I don't see how pointing out that nobody bats an eye when Google does what China does is "flamebait", it's just an observation. Other links were benign in nature or then sourced as factual right below 'mod' comments. Thanks.
- wnevets 8y agoThat sounds downright awful.
- Fins 8y agoBut Samsung isn't an SV company, so it's to be expected.
- walrus66 8y agoCertain actors have been getting away with murder for over a decade now. We have a few lucky first movers that have become alpha predators and are now stifling innovation. I can't really see any rational argument for this type of behavior benefiting our society or market at all - beyond religious adherence to the free market or if Google is working exclusively with your political party (wink wink). Hopefully regulators wake up in the near future - societies that don't protect entrepreneurs won't have any.
- pmarreck 8y agoThis is a level of douchiness I cannot fathom. What possesses these people to act in this fashion and how do they sleep at night? How is this not seen as clearly unethical behavior? A clear violation of Wheaton's Law, here. I mean... I could easily take that lollipop from that naïve baby in that baby carriage... but I don't, simply because I'm Not A Dick™. Did all of Silicon Valley get the wrong takeaway from the Apple/Xerox thing, or something?
- mr_overalls 8y agoMoney. And money. And pathological drive to win.
- pmarreck 8y agoIt's sneaky and underhanded and shady and evil. Let's use a different real-world example. An acquaintance shows me an "attic treasure" that I know is worth at least $20k on the open market. Do I offer them $100 and not tell them what it might really be worth? Does it depend on how well I know them? In my case, even if I did not know the person at all and never expected to interact with them again (basically, the recipe for non-cooperation, according to Axelrod's https://smile.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465005640?sa-no-redirect=1 https://smile.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Rober...), I'd offer them about $5k (given some reselling risk and effort on my part, which I believe is worth at least some of the difference). If they were smart then they'd refuse and do their own homework. If they simply wanted to accept the price, they could. I would NOT offer to take it off their hands for free. "More space in your attic!" I'm sure that Google didn't owe this woman anything and didn't know her from a hole in the wall but... This is just machiavellian ruthlessness. Don't be greedy, people. Make mutually-beneficial deals. It's not zero-sum (even though the particulars on how it's possible to not be zero-sum still escape me and hurt my head).
- starbeast 8y ago>(even though the particulars on how it's possible to not be zero-sum still escape me and hurt my head) The earth isn't a closed thermodynamic system ;)
- headsupftw 8y ago“Don't be evil"? Let's see if there's an uproar by Google employees this time. My bet is on "fat chance".
- maldeh 8y agoConsidering all the other corporate strategies Google employees have taken a public stand on lately, I wouldn't be surprised if there were serious fatigue on both ends - on corporate, for dealing with the constant rebellions killing major revenue sources (ex:- project maven's death being the end of any more government contracts); and for employees, who are likely sick of protesting an endless stream of obviously bad stuff while risking career alienation (ex:- dragonfly). What's not immediately publicly evident is the opportunity cost vis a vis attrition and new hires - how many people have left from disillusionment? How many prospective employees are actively shunning Google directly because of these policies? (While a number might provide explicit feedback to recruiters about their reasons to reject, it's probable a silent majority is silently avoiding all contacts from Google recruiting.) At least personally speaking, I had a vastly more positive view of google around 2012 when I started grad school (more or less my dream company to work for at the time) than what I had when graduating (sufficient to decline any recruiting requests).
- bytematic 8y agoReminds me of an episode of silicon valley where they write some of their implementation on a rival company whiteboard.
- pigscantfly 8y agoThank you for sharing your experience and backing up the original post; this is something I will remember should the opportunity to work with anyone associated with ATAP come up.
- irrational 8y agoI thought they dropped the "Don't Be Evil" motto a long time ago.
- mikeleeorg 8y agoWasn't there a Silicon Valley (the HBO show) episode about something similar? Ah, found the episode: Season 2 Episode 2, "Runaway Devaluation".
- epberry 8y agoNightmares.
- felipelemos 8y agoThis is a theft. They should be in prison.
- Splognosticus 8y agoIn retrospect why on Earth did we ever think a company whose motto was "Don't Be Evil" wouldn't be? It's like meeting someone who introduces themselves with, "Hi I'm John and I am definitely not planning to rape you to death and wear your skin as a mask."