Good to see someone positive about California, given all of the politically-motivated negativity. It's a great state for many reasons.
I mentioned non-competes as one of a universe of things that makes this unusual; including its original non-profit status becoming substantially for-profit, and the apparent ease with which MS can now gut the supposedly controlling non-profit and walk away with everything.
And, I'm guessing even the CA policy on non-competes wasn't conceived with the idea of one company simply "taking" another company at-will, even if that scenario is technically covered.