Now, it is true that some company's secrets will be more valuable than others, and it's also true that most companies think that their secrets are more valuable than their competitors. But because of the symmetry, most companies are simply and necessarily wrong about that.
It is also true that some companies will lose money as a results of losing secrets. But society in general will be better off. Which of those is preferable is a matter of taste, of course. Some people are perfectly fine with a legal regime that enriches them (or that they think enriches them) at the expense of everyone else. But if people are making rational decisions, most people should prefer enriching society at the expense of the wealthy rather than the other way around.
That's the point though, how do Google's stewards square their pottential support for losing secrets, with their fiduciary duty to numerous teacher, firefighter and police officer pension funds? That duty to the investment funds backing heaven only knows how many 401k's? Their duty to countless other pension funds and retirement accounts?
"Society will be better off in the future your honor." Is only gonna go so far.
This is part of the problem, society might be better off at some undefined and uncertain point in the future. But for investors in Google, they will be better off right now, and in the short term future. So we're always in this position of trying to argue an idealistic future, that never turns out the way you plan it in any case, against an optimal present.
I think as techies we have to start presenting arguments for the changes we'd like to see in the world that are a bit more practical. Not only on labor issues like non competes, but also on issues like tech's relationship to labor, tech's relationship to fundamental rights, tech's relationship to children, etc etc etc.
At present, a lot of our arguments sound a little tone deaf at best, callous at worst, and out of touch at the mean. I've said before, in my neck of the woods, if I tell people, "Amazon treats their employees like crap." They get it.
If I say, "Google can track your location with android phones so don't bring your phone to see your weed man." They get it.
I can even say, "Facebook is full of Ruskies trying to influence the election." They'll get it. They'll know what I mean and everything that entails.
But if I come at the people in my small town with, "Big Tech is what drives wealth inequity by disrupting traditional labor markets and causing data privacy issues. Which, of course, concert to cause knock on effects in the larger economy." Yeah, that's the kind of post-graduate parrot-speak that makes them look at my mother disapprovingly for raising such a pretentious ass-hat.
They don't. It makes perfect sense for Google to oppose right-to-compete.
However...
> "Society will be better off in the future your honor."
This aphorism implies that this decision is going to be made by a judge. It isn't. It is being made by the legislature, and the legislature is supposed to reflect the will of the people. So the right outcome here (if everyone is acting rationally and honorably) is to enact right-to-compete despite Google's objections.
The situation is no different than (to pick a very extreme example) that it was right to pass the 13th amendment despite the fact that it was vociferously opposed by a lot of people who lost a lot of money as a result.
The fight for the 13th amendment was framed as "Slavery is evil. If you support slavery, you are evil too." That's the kind of moral argumentation that's simple enough that it can get voter support. There was a lot of economic jockeying going on and fights between new vs. entrenched interests going on in the Civil War, but all of that was hidden from the voters and largely written out of the histories. "Google spies on you" is an effective way to convince people to vote against Google's interests; "Google is commoditizing their complements and restricting their ability to make contracts to better their bargaining position" is gibberish to the average voter.
It's an unfortunate fact of life that nearly all good decisions are made for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I wish everybody could just understand markets and systems and vote according to their enlightened best interest - but they don't, and much of the fucked-upedness of the world comes from that.
Investment funds are usually well-diversified anyway - so when society is better off, they are better off too. It's really, really uncommon for someone to hold a sizeable position in a single company or even sector in the medium-to-long run. So, even if you posit that this bill might "hurt Google" (and never mind that Google is in CA where non-compete agreements are heavily limited already - funny coincidence, that one), only comparatively few stakeholders would truly be made worse off.