It's strange that even the NYT got this wrong -- the bulk of the agreement was not in fact about poaching engineers, but rather sales and product people[0].
the bulk of the agreement was not in fact about poaching engineers, but rather sales and product people
Do you have a better citation for this claim? The linked Business Insider article does not claim such a thing, and the court filings the article cites do not support the claim.
The article cites Google's Special Agreement Hiring Policy that divides companies into three categories: Restricted Hiring, Do Not Call, and Sensitive. Only the protocol with respect to Restricted Hiring companies is constrained to Sales, Product, and G&A. Google's protocol for the Do Not Call companies seems to prohibit actively recruiting any employee at those companies. The article does not address whether other companies limited the scope of collusion to, "sales and product people."
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-br...