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Palm's Colligan rebuffs Steve Jobs' 'likely illegal' plea to stop hiring from Apple
Imagine the scene two years ago, August 2007 to be precise. Palm was busy preparing to launch its Foleo and the OS that would save Palm was still expected to be coming from ACCESS. In fact, things were looking so bad for Palm in August that we penned an intervention letter that then CEO Ed Colligan responded to. Apple, for its part, was still enjoying the glow of the golden halo rising above its iPhone launched just over a month prior with the help of 2% of Palm's hired workforce, according to Bloomberg. Oh, and Apple had just lost Jon Rubinstein, the man leading its iPod division, to Palm.Now Bloomberg is reporting that Steve Jobs approached Palm's Ed Colligan in August 2007 with a proposal to refrain from hiring each other's staff (read: quit poaching our employees, Ed!). Colligan refused, saying,Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal.Meeeow.
Apple and Google made informal deal to not pilfer each other's employees?
While not official, sources close to the matter have told TechCrunch that Google and Apple had an informal agreement not to poach each other's employees. Apparently, Google's recruitment division knew and adhered to not actively seeking Apple employees to hire them away, and vice-versa with Apple's recruiters. That's not to say someone who voluntarily submitted a resume would be turned away, but as one published email notes, cold calls were against policy. An agreement to not poach each other's workers, even if not codified, is part of the reason the government has launched antitrust investigations, as it can be considered an obstruction to healthy market competition. It's believed this deal came about as a byproduct of Google CEO Eric Schmidt also being an Apple board member at the time. Of course, with Schmidt finally excusing himself from all portions of Apple's board meetings, there's a chance that hiring agreement walked away with him, and really, we wouldn't be surprised if the federal inquiry also decided to leave the dinner table at this point.
