It's Halloween in Silicon Valley (and presumably everywhere else), which means tech companies are turning their corporate campuses into moderately spookier versions of their normal selves.
European regulators are once again scrutinizing Google as complaints mount that the search giant is diverting traffic away from competitors in favor of their own services. But Eric Schmidt insists the only ones calling Google a monopoly are jealous haters who want to see the internet go back in time.
Yelp has been cleared of an extortion suit. A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit alleging the user review company forced businesses to buy advertising or have their rankings altered, ruling that the tactic amounts to "hard bargaining." A shareholder lawsuit over similar allegations is ongoing.
There have been reports circling of Yelp extorting small businesses for over five years. Those anecdotal stories have never been proven in court. But after the Federal Trade Commission revealed a number of complaints, shareholders are taking the company to court, claiming Yelp artificially inflated the price of stock for its executive's benefit.
The tech boom is bringing some undeniable benefits to San Francisco: The city's unemployment rate has dropped to just 4.4 percent, employment jumped to an all-time high, and the region has some of the fastest-growing wages in the country. But now one economist is predicting that the high salaries techies command could spur inflation.
