Silicon Valley’s image … suffered briefly after the 1990s bubble, which was created by an unholy collaboration among founders, venture capitalists and investment bankers, inevitably deflated and left countless retail investors, among others, holding the bag. The negative image didn’t last long as a new generation of tech giants emerged. For the last decade or more, until quite recently, the public love affair with Silicon Valley blossomed again, encouraged by the West Coast’s journalist-courtesans. That’s all changing as people consider what the tech culture has wrought on our society in less positive ways… The public isn’t thrilled, either, at being considered lab rats in Web giants’ experiments… the Internet industry’s essential business model—advertising-driven spying on us in ever-more pervasive ways. Eyes rolled as … ballot initiative for a vote on whether California should split into six states, one of which would be a Silicon Valley that would jettison its poorer neighbors like so much flotsam.
Is Silicon Valley the New Wall Street?

The collusion reportedly began in 2005, when Apple’s Steve Jobs approached Google’s top executive, Eric Schmidt, about working together to hold down salaries. After getting Google on board, Jobs “strong-armed” Adobe into joining the secret pact, according to court documents. The documents show that Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen was reluctant to go along until Jobs threatened to poach Adobe engineers…
64,613 Software Engineers Join Class Action Hiring Conspiracy Lawsuit …

See also:
~ Google Buses Fuel Inequality Debate as Boom Inflates Rents
~ San Francisco as a Capital of the “Left Coast” of America
~ Zuckerberg Bought 4 Pieces of His Privacy …
~ Silicon Valley “War on Women”
~ Silicon Valley as a “black hole”