employee

If you somehow got complete data, you would be certain to find that Google employees received a large raise after these agreements were terminated (as others pointed out in this thread):

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/11/10/on-googles-10-percent-pa...

That was something like 20,000-30,000 people, so if you consider it among the population of the 5 companies involved, it's extremely significant.

That was the largest raise I've received in a 13 year career in Silicon Valley, so I consider it anomalous.

But then you're back to the problem whether correlation is causation. You could conceivably argue that it was due to competition from Facebook, which was not part of those agreements.

In my opinion, salaries were depressed -- although how much and for how long is very hard to determine.

(google employee here)

One thing I have always wondered is if the raises Google employees received in 2011 were a result of the illegal collusion being uncovered and therefore no longer depressing salaries. The timing seems about right.

For reference: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-raise-2010-1...

(It was much more than 10% by the way, and by far the biggest raise I've ever received in my career)

It's beyond dispute that the raises were given for competitive reasons. (No, we didn't all get a raise because we were doing such a great job.) There was an uptick in Googlers leaving.

I suppose some of it had to do with Facebook, which was NOT part of the collusion. But I wonder how related the two events are, and if this issue will come up in a future class action lawsuit.

It's a pretty unprecedented event to give all employees at an enormous company such a big raise. A sudden shift in the job market caused by this defunct agreement could explain it.