Google, Apple settle high-tech workers' lawsuit

At one point in 2006, Google sought Jobs' permission to hire a respected programmer, Jean-Marie Hullot, to run a new engineering office in Paris even though Hullot had already resigned from Apple, according to emails turned over in the case. Google also wanted to hire some other former Apple engineers that formerly worked with Hullot. After some email negotiations about what Hullot and his colleague would be working on at Google, Jobs wrote, “We'd strongly prefer that you not hire these guys.” Google then backed off its Paris plans, according to emails.

In another instance, Schmidt fired a Google recruiter who riled Jobs by contacting an Apple employee about a job opening. After being informed of the firing, Jobs responded with a smiley face in an email.

Jobs died in October 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Attorneys representing the employers had been trying to limit how much evidence could be presented about Jobs' management philosophy, including statements he made to biographer Walter Isaacson, if the case had gone to trial.

Schmidt, a former Apple board member, ended a decade-long stint as Google's CEO in 2011, but remains the company's executive chairman. Earlier this year, Google awarded Schmidt restricted stock valued at $100 million to supplement a fortune estimated at $8.6 billion by Forbes magazine.

Google also attempted to persuade one of its former executives, Sheryl Sandberg, to join the no-poaching pact after she became Facebook's chief operating officer in 2008. Sandberg refused to play along and Facebook continued to recruit Google employees, according to a sworn deposition that she provided in the case.

The no-poaching agreement among the tech companies had also triggered a separate 2009 antitrust investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. That resulted in a 2010 settlement that requiring Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe Systems and several companies to scrap their no-poaching agreements. None of the companies acknowledged wrongdoing.