“A Kirkland man arrested last week on allegations that he stole proprietary technology from the AltaVista search engine two years ago is a Microsoft Corp. employee who has been working on the Redmond company’s MSN Search initiative,” Todd Bishop reports for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“Federal authorities allege that Laurent Chavet, a former AltaVista employee, illegally accessed the California company’s computer system in March 2002 and June 2002, after he left AltaVista and well before he went to work for Microsoft. Chavet, then living in California, copied to his home computer source code that was used by AltaVista ‘to perform the function of scouring the World Wide Web,’ according to an FBI affidavit,” Bishop reports.
Bishop reports, “…people with knowledge of Chavet’s Microsoft employment confirmed that he has been working on the MSN Search effort. A brief biography attached to a paper Chavet co-wrote on text analytics described him as an expert ‘in all aspects of search technology.'”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software – May 16, 2003
thats microsoft for you
1st post
typical of a copycat mentality for a copycat company
No the first post is mine — see my post and timeline in the
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oops… wrong link
That was my post. Beat you to it!
It’s called corporate espionage.
And Microsh!t was all too willing to go along with it and look the other direction as long as it was in their favor, but since the guy has been busted, S. Ballmer & Co. will probably say something to the effect of ‘Well, we’re just as surprised as you are. We didn’t know *anything* about it.’
A$$-wipes.
This is a surprise to no one…
Is this going to be a QuickTime repeat? The parallel is there.
– MS didn’t see how both technologies could be important
– MS tried to catch up
– MS took a shortcut
– MS infringed on both technologies
– MS bundles/plans to bundle the technology
If the parallel holds, AltaVista will settle with MS or else. Then, MS will use Windows to try to monopolize another market and get away with it. DoJ will look at it and do nothing. EU will look at it and do nothing.
This is typical Microsoft!
They make me sick, they really do.
How many more technologies have Microsoft stolen through this technique over the year?
The company has no morals!
Based on the information in the story it was obvious that he was offered a job by Microsoft and before he started working for them he went back to his old company to steal the source code – Maybe that was one of the terms and conditions for working for Mocrosoft? – They wouldn’t employ him unless he gave them the source code?
Thant god the FBI aren’t biased towards corporations!
I hope that they make this public on all the news channels across the glode – then windows users will finaly realise what type of company Microsoft has always been!
They do this just to keep their precious market share!
On another note – did any of you know that after the anti-trust decision in Europe, where Microsoft paid $600,000 in fines do to monopolistic disregard for it’s competitors, that one of Microsoft’s Solictor’s (that they employee directly) applied for a position on the monoplies commission board??
Talk about ilegal or what!!
More Microsoft innovation?
–
Guys, don’t buy, don’t steal, don’t use, Microsoft products.
Make the effort to find alternatives. No more excuses.
what’s the problem? the guy is just doing his job–you know stealing competitve technologies and converting them to Microsloth product line..aka standard operating procedure
Heck, they might as well arrest everyone working at Microsoft, including bill. Isn�t the Microsoft motto “Not Invented Here”.
Why doesn’t this surprise me?
Billy Goat Gates has been arrrested as a young man
Billy Goat Gates stole Apple’s interface (Xerox parc was nothing like Mac OS)
Billy Goat Gates bought a truckload of G5’s to program new X-boxes for the new G5 chip, only to give the technology to Asian chipmakers and cancel the IBM order.
Billy Goat Gates purposely left his OS insecure so the CIA, NSA, FBI and every crook and thief to snoop into peoples computers.
Billy Goat Gates has violated every buisness ethic around.
So what makes this story any different? Do we really want Microsoft to control the world?
Billy Goat Gates is the ANTI-CHRIST!!!! 666 on your head!!!
Don’t want it, they shoot you dead!!!
Why does this not surprise me?
[Billy Goat Gates bought a truckload of G5’s to program new X-boxes for the new G5 chip, only to give the technology to Asian chipmakers and cancel the IBM order.]
One question, one comment.
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a) Who are the chip makers?
b) We now only have to share the G5s with Sony.
What IS it with Microsoft and DEC?
First, they hired Dave Cutler and his team from DEC to build Windows NT, which wound up being so similar to VMS that they wound cutting a deal with DEC and paying them tens of millions of dollars to avoid a lawsuit.
Now they’ve hired someone who stole DEC’s AltaVista code.
On the bright side, if Microsoft really tries really hard to be DEC, in another ten years, they’ll be gone…
I wonder who they’re stealing from for Longwait…
If there is a God in heaven, please, please, please, pleeeeeease, let an email surface from Bill Gates to this employee, instructing him to go ahead and do this.
No one up there, gagravaar, need to rely on a disgruntled employee or sharp journalist. Wait a minute … is that an oxymoron?
Several years ago, there was a case in the auto industry involving Volkswagen and General Motors involving the colourfully named Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua who was head of purchasing for GM and defected abruptly to VW in 1993.
GM accused Lopez of stealing more than 20 boxes of documents on research, manufacturing and sales, incuding data relating to GM’s ‘dream’ assembly plant which it was hoped would challenge VW’s dominance of the small-car market in developing economy markets in Eastern Europe and the Far East, including China.
The world’s largest international corporate espionage case officially ended in 1997, when VW admitted no wrongdoing but settled the civil suit by agreeing to pay GM $100 million in cash and spend $1 billion on GM parts over seven years.
If I was AltaVista’s counsel, I would be sharpening my knives about now – and on the basis of my enemy’s enemy is my friend – if I were Google, Apple and Oracle I would be, at the very least, offering to assist AltaVista underwrite its legal expenses.
Ah the mac bias. Steve Jobbs can do no wrong, right?
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!