Sources Say EU Will Find Intel Anti-Competitive 210
Anarchduke sends in a Reuters story quoting unnamed sources who say that the European Union has decided to find Intel anti-competitive. The finding should be announced in the coming week. "...the Commission will say Intel paid PC makers to delay or scrap the launch of products containing AMD chips. The Commission will characterize the payments as 'naked restrictions' to competition, the sources said. ... Intel set percentages of its own chips that it wanted PC makers to use, the sources said. For example, NEC Corp was told that 20 percent of its desktop and notebook machines could have AMD chips, the sources said. All Lenovo notebooks had to use Intel chips, as did relevant Dell products. The figure was 95 percent for Hewlett-Packard's business desktops, they said." Previous infractions by Intel include giving illegal rebates to computer makers back in 2007 and paying retailers not to sell AMD-based computer systems.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean they shouldn't punnish corporation that harm the free market?
Is it me or is no one even remotely interested in following capitalistic rules?
I mean being for the free market and against socialism and all is not just about exiling the commies and making sure you get the highest bonus you can get away with
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice idea, but imagine the grief of having a major processor line forbidden from sales in general. AMD couldn't pick up all that slack, and other CPU companies are hardly in a position to replace Intel.
Result? A vacuum of components. Not good for the industry in general.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot:
4) The company abuses its dominant position.
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly who is paying the fine?
Uh, people buying Intel products.
They could buy AMD products, instead, which is more or less the point.
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately no. Banning their product effectively fines huge numbers of completely innocent smaller organizations who rely - in whole or part, directly or indirectly - on Intel's products for their income.
I don't think it's fair that little guy should suffer just because the big guy who's scraps he scavenges is a douchebag?
Re:EU is EU Centric (Score:3, Insightful)
All the time?
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, and no. Only Intel products will be more expensive, therefore AMD products competitive, which is the idea. Also take into account that the fine will revert to EU citizens as if Intel paid more taxes. I'm sure people would prefer Intel give them the money directly, but this is better than nothing...
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:3, Insightful)
*SNIFF* They're finally growing up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is what is known as "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it would stop operating in Europe, the local manufacturers would just buy the chips from USA while AMD cranks up its production to meet the demands for a whole continent which despises its competitor.
Please think before you write.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless they fine them billions they'll just shrug it off as a business expense.
Even then it's a hollow victory. The people will be the ones paying the fine via increased prices.
Re:About Time (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't want to compete fairly in the EU, you're not welcome in the EU.
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EU needs more money (Score:5, Insightful)
Even then it's a hollow victory. The people will be the ones paying the fine via increased prices.
Until now people have been paying Intels bribes and anti-competitive cost on top of the hardware prices.
I'd say the prices will stay the same for Intel and AMD should finally be able to compete.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I would agree with you there, but I'm in a slightly less cynical mood today so I'll offer a more toned down view...
Standard operating practice is to use your dominant position as much as possible without abusing it to the detriment of the overall market. This from what I can tell is what Oracle (to pick one of the above examples) does - if they were unfairly treating companies who ever recommended/use other databases I'm sure wed know as Microsoft would be very quick to head to the courtroom about it and open source groups would be up in arms too.
Going above and beyond using your position, i.e. abusing it to the detriment to others, should not be seen as encouraged by the markets any more than someone accidentally dropping their wallet should be seen as encouragement to take the cash found there-in before handing it to "lost property". It is abuse of the monopoly that the EU is going after, not just use. MS were suspected of abusing their monopoly so were investigated and called to order (with little effect it would seem, but that is a whole different discussion), now so have Intel.
Of course the above depends greatly on the definition of the very fine (and arguable) line between use and abuse... Intel's behaviour in this case is definitely abuse, I dont' see how else it could be interpreted, but in other cases things are not so clear cut. Are some of Google's plans an abuse of their position or just use of it? What about some behaviour of (to be more general) the large chain supermarkets?
One final complication is that some monopolies, often those that stemmed from a company having spun off from a previously government owned project, being forced to *help* the competition or at least provide services to them at no cost greater then they would cross-share themselves in their internal economy. BT in the UK having to provide access to exchanges for other companies to install equipment, where possible, being one example. I don't see how this would be possible with Intel, but you can see the reasoning in some of the edicts given to Microsoft by the EU about making the installation of alternative browsers easy and obvious to the user.
Re:EU is EU Centric (Score:1, Insightful)
Then it's not really "free" is it? You're still paying the bill, except the money is being sucked directly from your paycheck, instead of as a voluntary arrangement between you and your doctor (or dentist).
Also government healthcare is a monopoly, with all the negativity that word implies. People rail about the Comcast monopoly being too dominant and taking-away freedom of choice, and then five minutes later cheerlead the benefits of an Uncle Sam monopoly. Yeah that makes sense. :-| Look at the U.S. government school monopoly - it sure has worked great, hasn't it? Yay, lack of choice. Woo hoo. ;-)
I prefer a system that has literally tens of thousands of hospitals spread across the continent, such that if one hospital (or doctor) sucks ass, you have the freedom to choose a different hospital (or doctor). Embracing monopoly takes-away freedom. It is anti-choice.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you that this does not have an "anti-American" motivation and I'm generally pretty sensitive to that sort of thing. To my mind it's that the EU has a different view of how monopolies should be regulated than the U.S. government does - at this time. I actually agree more with the EU position in the cases of Microsoft and Intel. (I do think the EU tends toward over-regulation instead of letting the markets work while the U.S. seems to be too laissez faire.)
I'm pro-capitalism and pro-market, but here in the U.S. we seem to have forgotten that the objectives of government economic policy should not be the perfect "efficiency" of markets. It should be the well being of it's population over the short, medium and long terms. Capitalism and free markets are a means to this end. They are not the end itself. Neither were mandated by God or advocated by any of the major prophets so why do some people act as if they were?
/. moderation are little ugly TROLLS (Score:0, Insightful)
"How often does the EU find companies in Europe anti-competitive?"
Here is what you have on /. with the /tardian Moderation, the question above was aksed and modded TROLL. Obviously its a legit question and yet its forbidden here to discuss and its obvioulsy relevant.
Of course to moderation here, its GWB's fault
Thats how they roll and its obvious whats going on in the EU, the socialist house of cards needs to bleed more money from the producers of the world to pay for their utopian delusion that is just a giant ponzi scheme of an economy.
Re:Tell me who actually pays? (Score:1, Insightful)
If it would stop operating in Europe, the local manufacturers would just buy the chips from USA while AMD cranks up its production to meet the demands for a whole continent which despises its competitor.
Please think before you write.
Maybe in the long-term yes, but currently AMD only owns something like 20% of the market share. If the EU properly barred the Intel product line then importing the units from the US wouldn't be worth it, and AMD can hardly crank up it's production fast enough to gobble up the vacuum that Intel would leave without a period of serious disruption to the EU industry, not to mention motherboard manufacturers needing to gear up their AM2/AM3 socket lines and having to dump their Intel ranges.
Having to suddenly crank up production to fill an ~80% market share gap for an entire continent won't happen overnight, you know.
Re:Skype (Score:1, Insightful)
Intel doesn't work this way, at least in the US. They are afraid of anti-trust regulators coming after them, so they bend over backwards to make sure they don't do anything like you described. They never threaten to take away any of the rebates or special pricing they offer to everyone.
If Intel comes to you for something, they offer you so much, that you just can't say no.
I worked at a large tech company and had the more or less final say on what CPUs were better for us. More accurately, I would give equivalent price points for AMD processors vs Intel processors (in reality, we looked at many other cpu's, but no one else was every really in contention.) I.E. I would say at $X Intel's latest CPU is better than AMD's at $Y. Intel always managed to lower their price until their CPUs were a better deal than AMD's. AMD was so used to this, they used to come in with their latest CPUs acting like dogs that had been kicked until they were nearly dead.
Finally one year, Intel's chips were so much worse than AMD's that Intel would have had to pay us to buy their chips. For obvious reasons, Intel couldn't do that. That year, we went with AMD's chips. That latest exactly one cycle. Intel managed to fix their chips and provide a really good deal. We switched back to Intel.
Yes, Intel used to give all of us lots of interesting swag and we would always accept it. The informal policy was for anything small, we would give it to the first person that didn't deal with Intel that wanted it. For large things we would have a drawing. When ever they would take us on an outing, all the purchasing and technical purchasing people had to work late and couldn't make it, but tons of people who had nothing to do with purchasing chips would always stand in for us.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EU is EU Centric (Score:3, Insightful)
Of all the reasons to speak against universal healthcare, "theft of property and labor" based on your value judgment of another life is not one of them.
Re:Give the Fine to AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi, I'm Cyrus and I'd like some money too. Yeah, me too, make the check out to VIA. Hey, DEC here, don't forget me! Yo, dudes, it's Joe Blow; I had a great idea for a chip but I couldn't get VC funding because Intel was in such a dominant position; where's mine?
For a real world example of why this is a bad idea see any music industry initiative to levy recordable media.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's do a foot race analogy!
Two racers competing. Ideally, the faster runner should win. But one competitor isn't quite sure that he will win or that the margin will be big enough. So instead of focusing on being the best runner he can possibly be, he sets about bribing judges, paying shoe sellers not to sell the best shoes to the other runner, and making deals with sponsors not to sponsor the other runner.
This is about fair competition and calling people out for using dirty and ILLEGAL tricks to suppress the competition. In the U.S., big companies have largely purchased most of the government and get away with things they shouldn't. In the E.U., a relatively fresh government body, has not yet been bought out by large companies and are more free to enforce laws in which big businesses are in violation. This may eventually change as time goes on. I suspect the change will come through pressure by the U.S. government, on behalf of U.S. industries.
Wouldn't it be nice if the E.U. could somehow gain leverage and apply pressure on the U.S. government to reform?
Re:EU is EU Centric (Score:3, Insightful)
First, your arithmetic is atrocious. Work on that. Second, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "the Microsoft fine", seeing how Microsoft has been fined several times, since unlike those European companies, it just doesn't want to learn. Third, none of the companies I listed were stupid enough to try to string the commission along [guardian.co.uk]. But then, with profit margins reaching 81% [europa.eu](par. 464), perhaps it's not really a matter of "stupidity", ey.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean they shouldn't punnish corporation that harm the free market?
I think you might have an odd definition of "free market". IANAE, but it seems to me that a business protecting its interests against competition is a fundamental part of the free market concept.
You're the one with the odd definitions. If I protect my interests by hiring mercenaries to shoot anyone who goes into my competitor's business that's the free market since I'm just protecting my interests against competitors?!?
As soon as the government starts interfering, it's no longer a true "free market"
Umm, without government protections, there is no free market, just anarchy, which is decidedly unfree for everyone who doesn't have the most firepower.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)
The "free" in "free market" refers to freedom of entry and exit. It in no way underwrites the archaic understanding you are pushing. It used to be believed, back before large conglomerate monopolies, that the free market governed itself. Then monopolies happened, either state manufactured via patents, or through what you describe. Nations wishing a free market economy then realized that the "free" had to be enforced via regulations and those regulations needed teeth to punish the Business School Product who connived, cheated, and stole violating the "free".
Antitrust regulation was drawn up and enforced. Then a strange thing happened, people like you never read up on what makes a free market and the "free" stopped being as protected as it needed to be. The consequence is companies that feel they can do anything they like to restrict "free" causing those of us who do read heartburn.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)
You're kinda missing the point of the free market. You're thinking of wild west I can gun any man down sort of freedom. The free market is free as in freely competed within. Which is why the US and EU and many other governments have groups that are supposed to maintain exactly that, the ability for anyone to enter and compete within the market based on their goods. Not on their ability to pay people to use them.
Free markets aren't the natural progression of capitalism but something that has to be enforced.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:4, Insightful)
it's important to remember that "monopoly" when used here doesn't mean 100% of the market, but (like MS) enough of the market that it might as well be 100%, or at least large enough that they can exercise anti-competitive behavior.
One of the clichés in economics texts is the "5-50" rule of thumb saying that a "market" acts like a monopoly if 5 or fewer companies get 50% or more of the sales.
Of course, like any rule of thumb, this is basically "economics for dummies", because the reality is that there's a continuum of actual behaviors. Some big companies are run by people with ethics and a long-term view (though they tend to disappear with time). Some markets have sufficient delivery problems that they act like local monopolies even with a hundred companies.
But the point of such things is to debunk the traditional even sillier idea that you only have a "monopoly" if there is just one company. This is called the Etymological Fallacy, the idea that the meaning of a word is defined by the meanings of its parts in the original (long-dead) languages. It's popular with the people who like the idea of unbridled, lassez-faire capitalism. But that's not how economists or most other people use the term in English. In the real world, there are such things as "gentlemen's agreements" that produce monopoly markets even when there are several sellers.
It's fairly clear to nearly everyone that the US retail computer business is a monopoly market, although there are two companies supplying the core hardware and two companies providing the OSs. A small fraction of the population can actually name the second software supplier (though very few can name either hardware supplier). But it's been that way here for a few decades now, so we don't expect that we'll see an actual free market in computer retailing in our lifetime. It's interesting reading about efforts in other parts of the world to do something about the monopoly. It'll be even more interesting if they actually succeed, and make it possible for smaller startups to actually do business.
Re:EU needs more money (Score:3, Insightful)