It's been amusing to hear his story. Starting a church/religion was my favorite part.
I bet Google and a bunch of other companies are excited about the message this sends to other arrogant engineers who might be considering leaving and building new companies with ideas developed at their prior places of employment. That precedent is worth billions if not trillions.
"building new companies with ideas developed at their prior places of employment" is VERY different from copying files and stealing IP. The former is the reason Silicon Valley is what it is today.
The Traitorous Eight (the highest profile case of what the OP was describing) is one of my favorite Silicon Valley stories. If you haven't read about it, you really should! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
I'm not asserting he did either, there is a lot of grey there for sure. I'm saying that's the message a lot of people will hear from this result, for better or worse (my opinion is worse, but it's nothing more than my opinion). I think we agree here.
This is harmful to innovation in the Bay Area. Big Tech eats up all the talent and now sends the signal that they can’t leave. The trial hasn’t even begun for this case - I think they’re still debating what constitutes a trade secret. This seems personal. Google got angry that one of their “own” went to a competitor.
I bet this will make companies think twice about acquiring startups founded by Google employees.
Anthony brought self driving tech to Google, and that's why we have Waymo. Him leaving was an actual competitive threat to them. Look at Don Burnette and others who have since left. Google doesn't give a shit about them and they have AV companies that have raised millions of dollars.
I bet Google and a bunch of other companies are excited about the message this sends to other arrogant engineers who might be considering leaving and building new companies with ideas developed at their prior places of employment. That precedent is worth billions if not trillions.