Is there a distinction between "a no cold-call agreement" and "wage fixing" that I'm not aware of? This sounds a bit like "I didn't commit assault I only hit him".

>Our (Google's) policy only impacted cold calling, and we continued to recruit from these companies through LinkedIn, job fairs, employee referrals, or when candidates approached Google directly. In fact, we hired hundreds of employees from the companies involved during this time period.

Not defending google here, but there is some nuance to the issue.

The scummiest part to me is that they made "agreements that, when offering a position to another company's employee, neither company would counteroffer above the initial offer."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

If we didn't get conspiratorial about it, we'd have to admit it's the natural interest and tendency of labor monopsonists to try to suppress wages.