Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel fined for antitrust breach

(AGI) San Francisco, Jan 14 - U.S. tech giants Google, Apple,Adobe, and Intel paid an undisclosed fine as part of aplea-bargain in a class action case brought by their employees,who accused the Silicon Valley companies of stipulating asecret agreement not to hire each other's personnel in order tokeep wages in the sector down. The case was filed in 2011. SanJose' district judge Lucy Koh rejected the initial plea deal of324.5 million dollars after considering it too low. Accordingto a rumour published on the New York Times, the final agreedsum was 415 million dollars. The companies were pinned by anemail exchange that occurred at the time between Apple andGoogle's CEOs, Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, and theircounterparts at Intel and Adobe, in which they agreed not tocompete with each other for employees. . .