Comment by LargeCompanies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LargeCompanies | Hacker News Reader

I once got an email from Motorola/Google regarding one of my projects/startups and then after a phone call I hopped on a plane to meet/demo my technology to them. During the phone call it was asked.... have you ever thought of selling your technology and we'd love for you to demo.

Well this type of interaction is what almost ever startupper/inventor wants to receive and then sell their technology to the big G.

Turns out the big G (Motorola ATAP at the time now Google ATAP) were a bunch of jerks who just wanted to know how our non-public technology worked. After flying from Bmore to Silly Valley .. filing our provisioinal patent and then them prying the info out of us with the bait of buying it we were quickly showed the door and told the race is one... better hurry.

I guess that's part of Google's R&D process...stomp on & treat the little guy like garbage!?!

YOu need to lawyer up if you don't have connections who are connected to X big brand. It's David vs. Goliath and Goliath will just crush you and your hopes and dreams.

Here is my blog post i wrote after our mutual NDA expired... http://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html.

> I guess that's part of Google's R&D process

It wouldn't have been the first time they allegedly do it like that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/339sty/ju...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp#Private_company_.282009.E...

Yeah, that's common for large companies, intentional or not.

They have a large set of stakeholders who need to sign off, and they work on different timelines, and they have whole departments of people whose job it is to develop and propose acquisitions, of which maybe one in ten actually happen.

A real offer comes with a real check. Don't engage more than very high level without a letter of intent. Don't stop what you're doing until the check clears.

Rule of Thumb: Don't pass around those kind of projects, planning, ideas, etc on Google+, GMail, Facebook, Bing, hotmail, Yahoo, #Slack etc... unless you intentionally want/expect someone else to run with the idea, because if it is any good they will run with it.

Use E2E encryption to coordinate, communicate, etc but don't expect those services, software, and the hardware they run on to protect you or your company and ideas in any real meaningful manner.

> Rule of Thumb: Don't pass around those kind of projects, planning, ideas, etc on Google+, GMail, Facebook, Bing, hotmail, Yahoo, #Slack etc... unless you intentionally want/expect someone else to run with the idea, because if it is any good they will run with it.

What's the paranoia level of this suggestion?

I mean, if you could prove that company X stole your novel idea from a conversation between you and someone not working for X on X's platform, you'd definitely come out on top right?

So surely companies big enough to have a reasonable chance of such conversations going on aren't so stupid as to snoop for product ideas?

> What's the paranoia level of this suggestion?

The kind of paranoia level that's reasonable to have, nowadays. If you're too young to have heard of Snowden, read up on him. If you're too old to remember Snowden, read up on him. The concept of industrial espionage is not just a concept, it's being done all the time.

Now you may assume that upper management would not want to have something come to light and would therefor not engage in it. The thing is, upper management does not control what employee X does. And employee X may want to get that promotion after all.

The fact that society shifts more an more of their lives onto Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. servers boggles my mind. And they don't even end-to-end-encrypt (assuming that encryption is currently not broken yet).

> If you're too young to have heard of Snowden, read up on him. If you're too old to remember Snowden, read up on him.

Does that apply to anyone reading HN in 2016?

My asking about paranoia level was not intended to slight. Some amount is healthy in this context, as you say.

I suppose my point was that although not every employee can be relied upon, surely this fact means that such companies, not wishing to get into trouble, don't allow employees access to data like that.

End-to-end encryption is obviously a good idea. Though I also appreciate that not having it (and, e.g. "Snoopers' Charter") catches bad guys - for some order of 'badness' that isn't extreme enough that we can assume they're all up on encryption (as is the common argument for it being ineffective against terrorism) e.g. paedophiles rings.

I don't believe that it has ever happened in the real world.

I did some work (non-IT) for a retired internet billionaire, who doesn't mind one bit using gmail as his private email address even though Google is a direct competitor to the company he got rich with (and they have the upper hand in their market).

Likewise, one of his start-ups' (1 million unique visitors per day) entire closed-source code base is on Github.

From a legal and commercial point of view, it would be devastating to Google et al. if they were found to be stealing IP like that.

Hmmm it wasn't a novel idea rather that we can sync audio, video, etc..across any type of IP device is/was novel.

After posting this YouTube video demonstration .. 2 weeks later they and many others came knocking/expressed interest https://youtu.be/CAnEFOr1lP4

Does that make Silicon Valley's "brain rape" scene eerily accurate?

(Of course someone uploaded it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc)

I have heard that my true life story echos things that happen on the HBO show, "Silly Valley." I personally never watched it... too painful :-/

RE: that clip ....yeah and you can tell them your secret at that time, but they don't own you/your team, skills, passion nor the improvements made to the work over time. They just know how we were able to sync audio across any IP device via the web after two months into development. A ton has changed since then and 100% for the better.

Oh and I never transferred the NDA from Motorola to Google per the letter they sent me in May of 2014 that's posted in my blog post. Google in 2014 sold Motorola to Lenovo, but kept Motorola ATAP.

Ok sure I am going to sign that for you ... yeah right!

I probably could have publicly talked about this early then May 2015, but I always keep my word until Im no longer legally binded too.

Very good point. Google did the same thing to Space Data Corp: took a look at their technology, paid them nothing, then used that knowledge to develop Project Loon.

I have no idea what they did with the knowledge gained and do not purport to say they used it.

I am curious if any of what they learned was then used in ChromeCast Audio as that GUY who invited me is a tech lead on that project.

And the HN account used to post the parent was also originally a throwaway. These kinds of problems needs to be fixed.

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