DOJ Probing Hiring Pact Among Top Tech Firms: GOOG, APPL, YHOO . . . - SiliconValleyWatcher

"The DOJ, under the new leadership of Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, seems to be determined to find some type of anti-trust behavior by top US tech firms, especially Google. But this investigation seems to be clutching at straws. Even if true, it would probably not result in a criminal prosecution. The Deal Pipeline reports that the letters are in the form of a Civil Investigative Demand."

Once again, the Obama campaign did a lot of tough talk during the campaign and now find themselves hard pressed to turn those words into (substantive) action.

Might there be some collusion in this area? Sure. Is there likely to be a paper (or e-mail) trail no. Is it likely that some third, smaller, upcoming company is harmed by this in any way? No. In fact I'd say the smaller companies are blessed by the fact that these has-beens are doing all their job-hopping among the majors, dragging them down with their big salaries and small, re-cycled ideas.

There are so many ways that big business present a barrier to competition from smaller ones it could fill and encyclopedia. Instead they go after something nobody cares much about. In fact, any DOJ action in this area is sure to be a benefit to the Googles and Microsofts of this world.

We DO know that the DoJ and other agencies can't account for millions of dollars they spend each year. How about a scaled back accounting, just for IT expenditures:

(1) Every IT dollar spent on major vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the major Beltway bandits (they don't call them that for nothin').

(2) Publish the minutes (or best approximation) of every meeting DoJ purchasing people had with these vendors on pricing issues, delivery problems, etc., so that we can see exactly how you negotiate with these monopolies on purchases that taxpayers bear the brunt of.

I guarantee you if you can put enough information out there you won't have to pay anyone to track down problems with your own budget. And pairing back monopoly companies abuse of government spending will go a long way toward pairing back the monopoly power these companies have.

I dare ya.