[corresation]

A cartel are competitors who privately agree to essentially not compete, and this can include on the production side (which in this case are tech workers). The unavoidable, and intentional impact of that is wage suppression. This isn't a "maybe", this is absolute certainty: A rising Google upset the apple cart by offering more than those other companies were, and everyone else was sour that they'd have to start paying more to keep their employees. This agreement, without any doubt at all, took money out of the pockets of tech workers.

I'm generally a fan of Google, but I have a negative opinion of Eric Schmidt. So many times he says and does things that seem so fundamentally detached from real life.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that the hero of this story -- the only one who actually saw that it was wrong and probably illegal, was Edward Colligan, then the CEO of Palm - http://pando.com/2014/02/19/court-documents-reveal-steve-job...

[cpncrunch]

Not according to any defn i can see. All defns say a cartel regulates production and output.