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FTC Opens Formal Antitrust Investigation of Intel
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jun 06, 2008 03:01 PM
from the setting-the-antitrust-bar dept.
from the setting-the-antitrust-bar dept.
andy1307 writes to tell us that according to the New York Times, The Federal Trade Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation of Intel. Reversing the decision of former FTC chairperson Deborah P. Majoras, the new chair William E. Kovacic is pushing the investigation to look into Intel's pricing policies. "Since it will almost certainly be many months before the commission decides whether to make a case against Intel, as European and Asian regulators have already done, the investigation could mark an important early test for the next administration on antitrust and competition policy."
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Never understood.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I still resent Intel for gouging me all through the 90s, but let's face it they are the best and AMD have largely kept Intel in check.
That said, if their pricing strategy is illegal, well I guess they should get sued.
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I'm an
Not just Anti-trust (Score:2, Interesting)
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Often times, what appeared like a bad CPU was actually a motherboard issue with voltage not being applied correctly. I found this on a few KT266A boards where the BIOS would be set for 1.65v but instead supply 1.58v, or barely enough to boot. The fix for this, was to set the BIOS voltage to 1.7 and usually achieve a voltage of 1.6+ which was sufficient most times.
This wa
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This like most of the techno anti-trust cases is plain old Bullshit and reeks of nothing more than more bashing on big guys, which our government appears to like to do more and more.
And they wonder why more and more businesses are starting to locate outside of the USA.
You do realize, as the article says, that the US was one of the last countries/organizations to investigate Intel, right? The EU has already opened an investigation, and just recently, South Korean fined Intel $25 million. So yes, more businesses should locate outside the US, so that they will be under the jurisdiction of sane government entities who aren't pussies and will actually investigate companies for antitrust violations.
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In fact, if you read the fucking article you referenced there, it specifically said so.
Let the evidence gathering begin... (Score:3, Insightful)
I used Intel when they were fastest and AMD when they were, and now I am using Intel Chips again.
If Intel used its position to force vendor lock-in and exclude AMD, and AMD can prove they lost a healthy chunk of market for the Athlon 64 that, most likely, would have went to resolve the teething problems with Phenom so that it made its original launch date and frequency...then Intel is going to have to break out the checkbook and make sure they got a lotta ink in the pen, cause it's gonna cost them a LOT.
If it's proven that actions resulted in events like this, you can bet Intel will settle all allegations before a final finding of fact is ever released...and pay a healthy sum to AMD to just shut up.
I just hope that, if these allegations are true, they are forced to pay an equitable amount to AMD and not fight it for years because these two companies vying for my business keep prices low enough for us to get some great gear these days...
Wait a Minute.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did someone at the White House get up on the wrong side of bed one morning? Maybe the White House didn't like what the Executives were doing with their political action funds?
Why now?
And we care why? (Score:3, Insightful)
And we tax payers got to foot the bill.
How the monopoly might be construed (Score:3, Insightful)
But personally I never have any problems with Intel chip + Intel chipset... It always just works. It seems any time I have problems it is when I use some other chipset.
Re:How the monopoly might be construed (Score:4, Informative)
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I recently compared a Dell dual quad opteron and a like Dell dual quad Xeon, and wound up buying a few Tyan barebone dual quad's with adaptec raid cards and double the ram and still saved a couple bucks over anything Dell could do fo
More news on this (Score:2)
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0540220820080605?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0 [reuters.com]
Sorry I couldn't get it accepted. As a journalist, I'm a complete lamer. But it's an interesting article, and it may even be around for a bit--I don't know Reuter's policies, vis-a-vis demanding registra
Intel is Guilty (Score:2, Interesting)
The European commission made a estimate of the damage Intel did to the market and it came to $60 billion. I would like to see that much gi
The apple deal may also be part of this as well... (Score:2)
They even had better dual cpu systems vs the intel ones with FB-DIMMS and a poor bus with a weak pci-e setup VS the dual amd of the time with lower cost and less heat ECC ram as well the better Hyper Transport bus with alot more pci-e lanes. The nforce pro chipsets of the time of the time had dual pci-e x16 with SLI+ 2 x4 with dual gig-e with tcp/ip off load and teaming VS the intel chipset at the time that used FB-DIMMs and had les
AMD was also full 64bit back then unlike intel.... (Score:2)
Re:The apple deal may also be part of this as well (Score:3, Interesting)
It boils down to two things. First, Intel had the Pentium M, and were about to launch the Core (slightly improved Pentium M) and Core 2 (new, lower power, microarchitecture) lines. Apple were selling more laptops than desktop and this trend has continued. The Mac Pro is a tiny, tiny fraction of their turnover and profit - it's a showpiece, while the machine that actually sell are the laptops. AMD had nothing comparable in the mobile CPU and (importantly - one of the reasons for the switch was that Apple
Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
Intel has been using their size, money and influence to keep competitors out of use in their customer's systems. This is anti competitive, and when on a scale of this size, is considered monopolistic. Intel owns over 80% of the microprocessor market, plus they design specs for systems, such as their PCI spec.
If Intel is guilty of keeping other processors out of machines by being anti competitive, they are going to see some sanctions and fines.
Parent
Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry...
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Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Funny)
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What about Microsoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
But Microsoft has to be watching this very, very closely. If the post-Bush FTC is willing to go after Intel, you have to think they're going to get after Microsoft, too.
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Thne along come some other people, who make clones of Intel's chips. No one wants to buy the chips from the competitors, because they have no significant cost savings, no significant performance increase, and lack the feeling of being a "genuine" article.
So, all these companies that are trying to ride the coat-tails of Intel, and failing, get together and complain to the government that its not
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Major buzzkill, man.
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Sorry I squandered my last set of mod points. That was funny.
Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
Intel was a single source supplier for CPUs. IBM wanted a second source or they would not deal with Intel. Intel then sourced production of pre 486 CPUs to AMD. However, they did not restrict AMD from selling them as their own, which they did. Then, AMD was developing their own chips based on the instruction set and specification that intel developed. Intel sued for trademark infringement, knowing that AMD had the license to produce likewise chips. The courts in the US ruled that Intel could not trademark a number, which is why there was no 586, but rather the "Pentium" with the 5 prefix Pent. This is a trade-markable name.
Being more agile than Intel, and being willing to accept thinner margins than Intel, AMD and competitors were pricing very attractively to OEMs. Intel, however, looked disfavorably on this. They punished their customers with "shortages" of their chips and chipsets, knowing it would allow their customer's competitors, also their customers, to gain an upper hand. They also offered special pricing, not for volume, but for "loyalty." They would give their customers a break if they were 100% intel customers and not "Buy 10,000 units and get 200 free, which would likely have been legal.
The issue is not substandardness nor the inability to compete. Instead, it was that after the original Athlon, AMD was able to out maneuver the challenges that intel through in its way and was able to out innovate them in many areas. The FSB that intel still uses can cause memory bottlenecks as well as poor scaling to multiple sockets and cores, but that is a topic for another discussion. Intel was abusing their customers, their competitors, and consumers with their methods of market manipulation. But, to quell your intent to show that AMD et al were simply riding on Intel's coat tails, ask yourself "Who built the spec to extend x86 to 64bits with extended register counts?"
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This plan was really devious because not only does it encourage OEMs to use Intel, it also made "Intel Inside" into consumer religion.
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I think, or have always passively believed, that Intel is great, but that Microsoft dragged them along for a ride on the success train. I don't think 90% market share should be usable as evidence of monopolistic practices, but it is reasonable suspicion to warrant an investigation, IMHO.
Also, by comparison, Cisco was investigated for the same reason, but discovered to have simply done business better through innovation and such, not underhanded dealing. There
Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you need a history lesson. When AMD released the original Opteron in late 2003/early 2004, it had numerous desirable, innovative features that Intel's offerings at the time did not have:
AMD has alleged that Intel used its monopoly position to exclude Opteron and other K8 derivatives (Athlon64) from major OEMs for 2 years, from its release in late 03 until sometime in 2005, when the antitrust allegations were filed. During that time, the problem was not poorer, "cloned" products which offered no advantages over Intel's. Basically, anyone who followed the x86 processor market during that time knew that Opteron/Athlon64 was better than P4, for a competitive price.
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Owns share vs serves share (Score:2)
This can be written also as "Intel serves over 80% of the microprocessor market and their open standards like PCI are widely accepted."
Every time Intel has started acting like it "owned" the market, somebody has started drinking their milkshake.
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If Intel is guilty of keeping other processors out of machines by being anti competitive, they are going to see some sanctions and fines.
back in the good old days, the FTC and courts actually did their jobs and broke up [wikipedia.org] abusive [wikipedia.org] monopolies [wikipedia.org].
Not [bbc.co.uk] anymore [slate.com]
I guess that means we need new laws to compel the executive and judicial brances to actually enforce the law? or maybe establish a saddam-esque paranoid circle jerk of watchers watching watchers?
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How was AT&T broken up in any way that made sense?
Had AT&T been broken up by service layer instead of service area, we might actually have good telecommunications and true competition in the US
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Such large companies may be able to sway the market, but do not necessarily become abusive. Most likely they do, of course - power corrupts....
Indeed, that's a very good point, and it's equally worth pointing out that as long as the monopoly is not abusive, then it isn't breaking any laws.
Monopolies aren't "punished for success" as I heard a few thousand too many times during the MS anti-trust trial. Monopolies are punished for parlaying that success and resulting market power into back room deals designed to prevent any competition from getting a leg up.
Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, for those of you (like me) who were wondering what exactly they did:
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Re:Intel is a monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
Intel violated the concept of competition by threatening companies unless they only carried Intel products. They threatened to hold off shipments of paid products, etc. etc.
They've already been found guilty of antitrust in other countries. AMD claimed to have a mountain of evidence, and several companies willing to testify. I'm shocked it has taken this long to even really open the case in the US. The sad thing is that it almost worked out for Intel, that by breaking the law, they almost drove AMD out of business. At that point, a fine doesn't matter because they would have total market share.
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http://h20219.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/342254-0-0-0-121.html [hp.com]
or http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4600/specs.xml [sun.com]
PCs may have higher shipping volume, but servers are no slouch either, and produce higher margins.
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However, it's different when you squash the competition. You can do better than them, that is completely acceptable, but to force everyone to not buy their stuff, is not acceptable.
Difference: I own the world market on water. Someone else wants to produce water too. Do I continue to produce safer and better water (aka compete and also give a reason for my competitor to do better), or do I abuse my market control by doing somethin
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