HP accused of spying on Dell: like the movies, only lame
By Paul Miller 
posted Jan 26th 2007 10:00AM
posted Jan 26th 2007 10:00AM
We're sorry, but what's the good in corporate espionage if there aren't any high speed car chases, or innocent bystanders getting killed in the crossfire? Not much good, that's what. That's why we're a bit let down by this whole HP / Dell situation -- spying on Dell in hopes to unveil printer business secrets just doesn't quite have a blockbuster ring to it. All the same, there's plenty of drama in this situation to be getting on with. See, Karl Kamb got sacked by HP for purportedly founding a competing business while on the job -- Byd:sign, a flat-panel TV outfit -- and syphoning off HP resources and R&D to do it. He's being sued by HP for $100 million, and has now countersued HP, claiming that they hired him in 2002 to spy on Dell, a former employer of his, and of course asserting that all that "siphoning funds" stuff was off the mark. Just to make it all the more dramatic ('cause helping out HP anticipate a Dell launch into the printer business still isn't cutting it for us), Kamb is also asserting that HP obtained his private phone records via pretexting, a little practice that HP got into a heap big amount of trouble for last year. No telling at this point who's telling the truth: on the one hand, HP doesn't really have the best track record with pretexting and such, but at the same time it seems quite the convenient out for Kamb, to mark up HP's wrongdoings towards him as another case of pretexting. There's plenty more drama under the surface here, so we recommend hitting up the read link for more info -- before we start talking sequels.[Via Slashdot]
Dell has printer secrets?
Wouldn't HP's fortunes be greatly improved if they just fixed their own printer software? The feature race is slowing to a close. There is however a great opportunity to deliver much better operability with other programs (scanning from the front panel often yields no or few applications nor any effective way to add them) or build better HP applications whose objective is to provide functionality not just driving photo printing revenue to HP's web site. I don't think that they realize that many customers would pay for decent software. I guess they are too worried about selling ink.
One question: why don't all printers which offer 2 sided copying perform 2 sided scanning? Obviously the scanner mechanisim handles 2 sided originals in the process of copying. Go figure.
HP...Just focus on Printers and Scanners, thank you!
This doesn't make much sense in the grand scheme of things_ HP is known for their printers_ they are some of the best on the market between them and Xerox Phaser line I don't ever really bother with much else_
I wouldn't consider buying a Dell printer to save my life_ Besides until this article I didn't even know that Dell made printers_
Granted - I do agree with above that HP could revamp their software to make their printers better_ I wouldn't look at Dell for software either though_
This would be like Apple spying on Microsoft for ideas on OS X_
no, uberfu, that's like apple spying on microsoft for online music store ideas.
and then Dell will Sue kamb for the monery he gets from HP for spying on them, and since he has allready admitted it to the court he's going to lose bigtime.
Talk about digging yourself a big hole and then falling into it.
Corporate espionage for 'product secrets' is pretty much nonexistent. I've worked at companies that stole design ideas and I've seen more than my share of my own designs coming out of China but when you can just buy the product and dismantle it, cloak and dagger seems like a lot of work in comparison.
Even chemical 'secret recipes' can be easily dismantled easier than sending in a 'mole'. And in the end what company really wants them? Take for instance the idiot who worked at Coke and thought she could sell secrets to Pepsi. The first thing Pepsi did is say "um, Coke, one of your employees is trying to sell us your recipe."
Dell doesn't make printers, they just rebrand crappy Lexmark's as they're own. I don't know why HP would want any 'secrets' from the likes of Lexmark. HP's printers I don't have a problem with but they're software is complete nonsense. It takes 30 min to an hour to install them and theres absolutely no excuse for it. Just throw a driver on and go away. And then after its installed, it bugs the crap out of you to register it and update it.