Intel Faces $1.3B Fine In Europe 280
Hugh Pickens writes "European antitrust regulators, who have been aggressively pursuing what they see as anticompetitive practices among technology companies, could impose their largest fine ever in a market-dominance case against Intel. The commission began investigating Intel in 2000 after Advanced Micro Devices, its arch-rival, filed a complaint. In two sets of charges, in 2007 and 2008, the commission accused Intel of abusing its dominant position in chips by giving large rebates to computer makers, by paying computer makers to delay or cancel product lines, and by offering chips for server computers at prices below actual cost. Some legal experts speculate that Intel's fine could reach about a billion euros, or $1.3B. 'I'd be surprised if the fine isn't as high or higher than in the Microsoft case,' said an antitrust and competition lawyer in London. In 2004 Microsoft paid a fine of €497M, or $663M at current exchange rates, after being accused of abusing its dominance; the EU imposed another $1.3B fine in Feb. 2008."
Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all just speculation (Score:2)
There is no fine, this is just a media frenzy obviously to whip up the news a bit.
The fine could be 20 billion, or there could not be a fine at all. Just sit it out and wait.
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That's why he said "even if it's only potential teeth right now".
And if it becomes a real fine, you can be sure that the EU will enforce payment. Because if intel does not pay, the will be some hefty fine of X million € per day.
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not intel selling high quality goods for a low price. The problem is intel using their size and market dominance to threaten retailers into not using competitors products. Intel have been ensuring by force that AMD are not even getting a chance to hit "shelves" with their products. That really is a bad things for everyone.
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, when Intel finally pushes AMD out of business, the practice of selling server class hardware below market will no longer continue. The loss will be recovered, this time by one single vendor.
We have seen this before, however, an open source chip maker producing free chips is not so likely. That is why Intel must be kept in line.
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the RepRap project, while far from having a tool that can manufacture chips, could in theory be advanced until it is capable of doing so.
RepRap is a toy and a joke, and works in a way that cannot be used to produce chips even if it could be shrunk sufficiently.
It's not like computer chips require expensive materials to manufacture. They're made of the cheapest stuff on earth.
The expense comes from the amount of work needed to prepare the materials and make the manufacturing equipment.
Hell, if a government that isn't motivated by profit and leverage were to seize one of those fabs, they could use them to make hundreds of chips for every man, woman and child on earth.
Given that companies will often have more than one fab and can still be limited by manufacturing capacity, I think you're overestimating how much could be produced.
The scarcity only exists because we allow them to shut the things off and hold them over our heads like carrots to make us jump.
Or, you know, because they're bloody expensive to build and operate. Or can you make plasma etchers, ion implantation machines, photolithography machines, etc, in your basement?
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There's only one reason you engage in anti-competitive behavior. That reason would be, you know what you're doing is easy enough that others could do it too, and most likely better than you're doing it, and for less cost.
In this particular case, the reason is that others (AMD) are doing it too, which means that Intel currently has to charge semi-reasonable prices.
Explain to me why I am wrong. If you can.
You seem to be saying that anti-competitive behavior is only used by companies who already have an absolute monopoly and are afraid of losing it. This is incorrect; it's actually used by companies which do have a few competitors, to attempt to kill those competitors and obtain an absolute monopoly. (This is also why a company can be declared a monopoly and be subje
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You say 'threaten' where the word 'persuaded' is more applicable. It doesn't say Intel was threatening people, it said that they were selling below cost and that THAT action seemingly got retailers to buy.
Don't other companies sell products below cost to expand their market share?
Please refrain from misrepresenting what is happening with subjective/opinionated misleading words.
Is there any point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is there any point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess who it's going to be passed onto? Intel gets fined and I suspect that by some remarkable coincidence the prices of their chips mysteriously increase.
Yeah that's the point.
Intel have been able to keep their market share artificially high by abusing their dominance. This has made it difficult for other companies to compete. If Intel is forced to raise prices to cover the fines, then this gives other companies the chance to gain market share by competing on price.
In other words, the fine restores some amount of competition, as intended, and serves as a deterrent against continuing to abuse dominance, as intended.
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And if there is no fine, the other companies die off then we REALLY get hit by raised prices.
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Yes, misapplication of antitrust at its worst. This is just protectionism. Know the difference? In this case, AMD benefits, customers pay higher prices. In fact, say Intel raises its prices 0.5%. AMD can then raise their prices 0.4% and come out ahead. Who loses: Customer.
Please, spare me the "but in the future there's more competition, it's better in the long run" argument. I'm tired of reading stupid things today.
Re:Is there any point? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you are suggesting is that you want to pay a higher price for what will become a rather mediocre product. (why try to make a better product if you don't have any competition? Research costs a lot of money.)
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A well practised tactic is to sell a proportion of your products at a loss. You do it in the right markets, just long enough to drive your competition in that market out of business. Then you can jack your prices right back up again. Any losses you incur while doing this can be covered by other aspects of your huge multi-national business.
Being able to manufacture things at a high quality cheaper than your competitors is definitely a good thing for everyone. Selling things temporarily at a loss to put compe
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Re:Then why not give the $ to AMD? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think it's just a guise. Intel really appears to be guilty here, and are being punished legitimately. However, you're right that the EU is also motivated by the money, and the judgment is likely to be skewed by a conflict of interest.
I think a much better plan would be to use the money to fund a coupon program under which EU members can get discounts on competitors' products. That would be the most fair because the EU regulators would not have a conflict of interest. It would also really help those companies (ok, AMD) who were hurt by Intel's practices to regain ground that they lost.
Re:Then why not give the $ to AMD? (Score:5, Insightful)
And your basing the existence on a conflict of interest on what? Money from fines is put into the general budget, which is agreed upon long beforehand. Any extra income does not mean the commision gets to spend more, it just means the member states pay less (and that's not even taking into account that the commission has far less control over the money it does have than most governments). By that logic all financial penalties, including fines and tickets should not go be paid to originating party.
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The EU doesn't have the authority to break up a US-based company. Fines are one of their few options.
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Sadly, the biggest deterrent of them all -- locking the culprit out of doing business in the European market -- would only tip the scales so far towards AMD that it's not even funny. Which is why even two competitors is not nearly enough for a healthy market.
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That of course is not something the EU could do with an US based company.
Re:Is there any point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yah, NOT going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that little crisis we are in. No not the war on terror. No not swine-flu. Or the bird-flu. No not the high oil-price that one is over. No it ain't the low oil price either. The credit CRISIS! Geez pay attention will you!
Anyway, the cause of it all is big american companies who got so big they also fell under EU regulation convincing the EU that the US regulation was though enough. The EU swallowed that ONCE and look what happened. Dead, misery, war, starvation!... well okay, a suicide, some fat ca
3/5 (Score:3, Funny)
I give your post a 3/5. You didn't use the word "corporations" in a pejorative sentence. You didn't say "fat cats". You failed to mention Evil Monsanto.
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...and then AMD can undercut them, sell lots of product and everyone wins except Intel. What's the problem with that?
What you suggest would only be the inexcapable outcome if Intel were already a monopoly, which - thanks to legal actions like this from the EU - they are not yet.
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That depends. There are some of us, many former AMD fanboys, who today refuse to buy AMD after a series of failures in performance, quality control and chipset support. This coming from a guy who was damn proud of blowing a chunk of cash on an Athlon FX chip back in the day, and then again when the X2 was launched.
Today's AMD products share the name but not the legacy. Sure, they're cheaper than Intel's offerings, but there are those of us who want/need more than the bargain SKU, and that's where Intel b
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They kept AMD in the niche, especially during the days when AMD was indeed making better chips for cheaper. AFAIK the practices they were accused of were stuff like forcing retailers to carry only PCs with Intel CPUs so AMD couldn't get any OEM system sales and was unable to expand its market presence while Intel could prepare better chips to make the money on.
Re:Is there any point? (Score:5, Interesting)
series of failures
I recently bought a mobo with an AMD Phenom II X3 710 processor. You know, it's one of those quadcores where one of the cores doesn't work, and it gets fried by AMD and sold as a triple-core for about half the price of the quad-core.
Anyway, it worked as advertised, and then after a few days it magically turned into a quad-code !
$ sudo lshw -C cpu
description: CPU
product: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 10 Processor
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
physical id: 4
bus info: cpu@0
version: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 10 Processor
All 4 CPUs show in the system monitor and seem to work fine. Should I be happy or worried ?
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The core isn't necessarily broken. They'll use broken ones if there's any coming off the line but if there aren't any they'll use perfectly good quad-cores for this.
Normally the "disable" is done with those tiny resistors soldered on the outside of the chip. Maybe one of yours isn't soldered properly.
Playing Fair (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a good thing that there is someone keeping these giant companies accountable, since the US system isn't going to enforce anything. Remember the DOJ's anti trust case against Microsoft? Microsoft technically lost that one, but it didn't seem to cost them anything.
We need to enforce a fair playing ground where companies can legitimately compete. AMD has been the biggest impetus keeping Intel's chips moving forward and keeping their prices lower.
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DOJ anti trust case against Microsoft (Score:2)
YEA, what Intel should do is get the themselves appointed to a compliance board set up by the EU to monitor their future behavior.
Fine Them out of Business (Score:2)
Someday, the irony might be that the EU's actions result in reduced competition when a company simply packs up their products and leaves.
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You're skipping a step.
Too small a fine, and it's just looked at as a cost of doing business.
An appropriately-sized fine will make the cost of acting anti-competitively too much, which should motivate them to change their behavior.
Only when the fine is absolutely too large, _and_ the chance of them incurring it is enough, will they decide to stop doing business there.
I also doubt that a company like Intel would ever "stop doing business in the EU." Last time I checked, it was the world's largest unified mar
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war is peace (Score:2)
War is Peace [studentsfororwell.org], Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength, anti-competition practices reduces competition.
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But corporations are not emotional entities, they are controlled by their shareholders and Intel will not sulk and take their ball home from a market of 500M people just because that market has some marginally more strict rules on free markets than the US does. (which is ironic in itself)
If a corporation gets into a position where it can bargain with a state on whether it follows the rules or not, we are *all* in serious trouble...
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Ballmer. Ellison.
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OK, first you have to take off your blinders and realize that almost everything that runs up against the law is subject to negotiation. Ever hear of plea bargains?
Second, although rule of law is preferable to rule by arbitrary force, the Procrustean approach is not a good thing. There are bad laws, and I would argue that most laws are severely defective or evil by
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At least that would show commitment.
graverolling (Score:2)
How Much did they Profit From Their Alleged Abuse? (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF (Score:2)
Are you telling that if Bob and Jim both are able to make a chip, and that Bob decides to offer
a chip made for 10$ to a client for 8$ , thereby costing him 2$, yet netting him a good contract, and a foot in the door to make a good impression so that the next time , he will be able to charge 12$ for a 10$ chip, this is what we call anti - trust?
Am i missing something here, or is the world falling apart?
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Am i missing something here, or is the world falling apart?
Bob and Jim can both make chips for $10. Bob has $1000 in the bank, while Jim only has $300.
Bob sells chips for $8, losing $2 on each sale. Because of this, Jim can't sell chips for more than $8, so he also has to lose $2 on each sale.
Jim can only sell 150 chips at this price before going broke, while Bob can sell 500. So Jim goes broke first, and Bob raises his price to $20 per chip.
Then some time later Jane wants to start selling chips. She can make chips for $8, but only has $50 in the bank because she's
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:WTF EU (Score:5, Informative)
No there is no minimum price in the EU. There is however a rule saying that if you have a majority market share you are not allowed to lower your costs further than your production costs in order to try to kill competition.
The reason for this rule is that companies have in the past manipulated their prices in attempts to kill competition and thereby obtaining a monopoly. The airline SAS-Braathens was convicted of similar wrongdoings after they lowered their prices below their costs in order to kill competition and made up for it by charging multiple times typical airline fairs to destinations where they had a monopoly. The rules are very clear and established. Intel deliberately ignored them and are being punished accordingly. There's nothing strange here and the EU has been consistent about it. Intel and Microsoft got more attention because they are very large companies and the fines are based on your company's revenue. Other than that this is business as usual in the EU.
Re:WTF EU (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a practice called "DUMPING" designed to force the competition to either operate at a loss until they die or simply give up in the marketplace. Afterward, of course, the perpetrators jack their prices beyond what it should be, slow R&D so they can sell their old stuff faster and then set about abusing the market as a monopoly unimpeded.
Yes, indeed, it is illegal to "dump" your stuff in order to harm the competition.
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And when a nice lean company comes in and challenges you, you die of a heart attack.
Nope, you do the same again to the lean company as it just doesn't have the money to out survive you. Monopolies can be hard/impossible to shift by market forces alone, which is why regulation is required to stop any fish getting so big it >is the pond. I think people are just waking up to the fact monopolies in computers are as bad as monopolies in any market.
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Re:WTF EU (Score:5, Insightful)
In that alternate dimension where governments, not corporations, get to decide what the laws are. If Intel wants to do business in Europe, they have to abide by European law.
Re:WTF EU (Score:5, Insightful)
Not an alternate dimension. This dimension. This plane.
Intel had a market-dominating position, with AMD barely sniffing that their knees in the early 2000s. They also had a big fat cash surplus. So, they decided that by selling at a loss, they could keep AMD from breaking into the market; once AMD was bankrupted, or not able to compete, then they could raise their prices back up and begin raking in the cash.
This is a very, very classic example of anti-competitive behavior. It doesn't get much more textbook than this.
No. Because Intel was dominant in the market, they couldn't sell at a loss to drive a much smaller competitor out of the market.
Note that this is illegal in the US as well as in the EU. I suggest before you get your panties in a wad about how this possibly couldn't be illegal, you actually bother finding out why it's illegal.
Re:WTF EU (Score:4, Insightful)
You have no idea what anti-trust is all about, do you?
First of all, the rebates were not to all computer makers, they were to computer makers who would not carry AMD. So, if you were a computer maker that wanted to carry Intel, and you WOULD want to carry Intel since they were a near monopoly and for one reason or the other many of your clients would ask for Intel, then you would be at a price disadvantage if you also wanted to carry AMD.
Secondly, Intel was making enough money having most of the desktop market, yet AMD was gaining server market share with superior server products, so Intel tried to remove the competition from that market by going below cost until the competition was done.
So, it is not "illegal" when there are two companies on fair competition, size (actually market penetration) is indeed a factor and that is why there are anti-trust laws, which try to protect the consumer.
Let me give you an example in the US. I have heard cases where small ISP's started offering better/faster service than the large Cable providers in some areas. The Cable provider would suddenly undercut the small ISP by pricing at a loss at that specific area of service (which was only a fraction of the provider's total service so no real financial harm), which would force the small ISP close down. After that the prices were restored to even higher levels than before. So there are similar below-cost anti-trust laws like the EU, but sometimes companies get around them by claiming "limited time special deals" etc
So, do you think that Intel would keep selling below cost after AMD was done for? I am old enough to remember very well how much Intel CPU's used to cost before AMD started being competitive. Do you?
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In what alternate dimension does the EU exist where the above are illegal?
I think the "rebates" one depends on what the rebates are for. If it's something like a volume discount, it's probably ok. If it's something like "discount for not using AMD chips", it's probably not. I think something like the latter was one of the complaints in the US antitrust case against Microsoft.
Selling your main product below cost as standard practice (ie, not just for getting rid of outdated inventory) only makes sense to try to starve out a competitor who doesn't have enough cash reserves, and so
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At the end of the day, if you do not want to get fined for this crap, either do not do it, or do not be the market leader.
It's not even about being the market leader. It's about being dominant. For example, you can be the market leader in a segment of the automotive industry, or toilet paper, or the detergent industry, or but that means jack diddly squat, because there are enough competitors in any of those markets that the market leader still won't have enough clout to pull off most of these stunts.
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Is the EU accumulating a huge debt? Is the EU even a government? Perhaps you should consider doing some more research before equating a fairly loose federation of independent nations with the United States of America which is just the one nation.
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Who do you think the money is going to?
That's perverse, isn't it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, it is true that fines are a significant portion of the EU's small budget.
If so, doesn't this make it rather difficult for the EU to be a disinterested, fair, regulator?
It seems like they would have an incentive to invent corporate crimes and then impose fines for them, regardless of the targeted behaviors effect on consumers.
(Not withstanding TFA, which I haven't read.)
Re:That's perverse, isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't worry, he's just trolling.
"The budget also receives other revenue, such as taxes paid by EU staff on their salaries, contributions from non-EU countries to certain EU programmes and fines on companies that breach competition or other laws. These miscellaneous resources add up to around EUR 1.3 billion, i.e. about 1 % of the budget."
Source:
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/budget_glance/where_from_en.htm [europa.eu]
It's a rather fucked up moderation system lately. I'm always ashamed of my excellent Karma, because if these kind of posts get modded up, I don't want to be part of it.
The only way to get mod points lately is to be *VERY* quick with replies. Which means that people either know it already (which is fine) or, as in this case, make it up on the spot (which is fucked up). Sometimes I just cannot get mod points because the article is more than a few hours old and I had to wait for day light, and then do some research.
Especially when its about Java or security/cryptography it's annoying. I know a lot about those topics and most of the time I cannot even hope for my replies to be read. It's doubly annoying when there are +5 articles like the GP that are just PLAIN WRONG.
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That should be "almost ashamed" not "always ashamed". Slashdot ain't that bad :)
No. It's the EU which is perverse. (Score:2)
Actually, no, it's not all that perverse that they get most of their income from fines. It's much preferable, as an abstract concept, to (say) placing onerous taxes on everyone, as tends to be the common trend amongst governments. It'd be a much better practice to only 'tax' behavior which is seen anti-competitive and hostile towards the better interests of the society.
What's perverse about it is that the EU isn't an elected body. They're hand-picked goons by each country's respective government, and they g
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The EU budget [europa.eu] for 2010 is €139 billion. A fine of €980 million ($1.3 billion) would add 0.71% to this budget.
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Governments need someone to pay for the huge debt they're accumulating. Hey Intel, these guys, they have money. We can take it and spend it on programs that will make us look good, potentially reelected.
Sickening.
Please. It is a government. It can just print money if it wants to. As painful as the resulting inflation would be, that would be preferable to damaging the reputation of the rule of law on the continent.
Cue the brainwashed anti-trust crowd.
I think you misspelled "believers free economies"
Re:Plunder (Score:4, Insightful)
Please. Nobody prints money to create money any more... that's old school. They just make more loans and then sell the "paper" to some sucker as if it's tangible. The mortgage on your house effectively "printed" some more money.
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As you said it has to balance printing money and inflating. Why print when you can steal ?
An economy with anti-trust regulation is not a free economy. What part of freedom don't you understand ?
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If the EU finances itself with fines, the member states don't have to pay it. Simple transfer.
Re:It's illegal to make contractual sales in the E (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, unless they're giving these chips away, what's the problem? I'd be inclined to do the same thing, and I'd be shocked and amazed if the OEMs didn't suggest it and perhaps even push the idea themselves. (But honestly, both sides stand to profit from the arrangement. Follow the money...)
Well... this is the Wallmart Syndrome at its finest. Sell at or below cost until your competitors are bankrupt.
Just because Intel has money to burn, doesn't make it right. I don't see why anyone would encourage these practices, because they lead artificially deflated market prices for goods, coupled with monopolization, and sandwiched on top of a liquidity crisis. Does that sound familiar?
Because it should.
The consumers lose... the stockholders lose... Nobody wins here, except whoever got rich in the meanwhile.
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Okay. So first of all, the article did not state how steep the discounts are. They may indeed be below cost. We don't know.
Second, this is about Intel's business practices in Europe, not America. Governments (and presumably voters) in Europe get to determine what laws are passed there, and what laws are enforced there. Not Intel, and not you. "The problem" is that Intel appears to be in violation of several EU laws. The EU is taking steps to do something about it.
Why exactly would you think that Intel shoul
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But the OP, being an American, doesn't get to make that determination for Europeans. It's this arrogant notion that America should rightly determine the laws of every land that I'm objecting to.
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The letter contained three specific charges: that Intel offered discounts to a major European personal computer distributor to favour its products, paid a PC maker to delay marketing a model line using AMD chips, and also paid it to use Intelâ(TM)s own microprocessors in preference.
It's ambiguously worded, but my interpretation is that the allegedly infringing activities all occurred in Europe.
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It's socialist to require large companies to obey the laws in places where they do business?
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Consumers will only be paying these fines if they buy Intel's products which presumably will be less attractive due to them raising their prices.
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Consumers were already paying more for Intel's anti-competitive behavior. The costs of corruption were being factored into the cost of their products already.
What disappoints me more is the moral turpitude that is rewarded and clearly condoned at Intel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude [wikipedia.org]
Finally, someone who gets it (Score:2)
After all, does the poster you respond to think that Intel abused its position to give the world cheaper chips? HA!
enlightenment here (Score:5, Informative)
Because once they drove AMD out of business they would have an effective monopoly and prices would have shot right back up and it's illegal to do this kind of below-cost-selling.
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How are most of these practices problematic? Why should there be anything wrong with them selling chips for servers at below cost? Yes, it keeps them dominant but the result is cheaper servers for the rest of us. If the point of anti-trust regulations is to benefit the consumer then it isn't clear to me what the problem is with that aspect.
Prices below cost are unsustainable; they have to go back up eventually, and cost the seller money until then. This means that they only make sense if the intent is to bankrupt the competition so you can charge monopoly prices later. The consumers may seem to better off at the moment, but the problem is that they'll end up significantly worse off after not too long.
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You're not thinking long term enough.
Intel is betting on that by selling below cost for long enough they can bankrupt AMD. Once that is done, they'll have no competition and will be able to charge a much higher price. You won't be benefitting then.
And if it's allowed to go on, it'll last like that forever, as Intel can simply repeat the same trick if a new competitor comes along.
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Can someone please show me where Intel sold _below cost_ ? I fail to see how this is all relevant until someone actually comes up with numbers showing this. Discounts are given in every store and business in the world. Unless it's _below cost_ it's not illegal.
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Where do you expect to see it? We're talking about internal deals between companies, it's not like they publish the details of all their shady deals on their websites.
For instance, from the linked article:
If you expect to see an Intel CPU for $5 in a shop, you won't see it, it's not that simple.
The judge could of course demand the required informati
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
How are most of these practices problematic? Why should there be anything wrong with them selling chips for servers at below cost? Yes, it keeps them dominant but the result is cheaper servers for the rest of us. If the point of anti-trust regulations is to benefit the consumer then it isn't clear to me what the problem is with that aspect.
It can be confusing, if you only think about the cheaper servers you get today. If you had been around before AMD was competing with Intel on more than the budget desktop space, or even worse when AMD was nothing more than a second-source supplier of x86 chips, then you'd see the danger inherent in this and be petrified. Do you know how much Intel charged for a server chip before the Opetron came out? A high-end Xeon could cost you $4000 just for the processor. Shortly after the Opetron, that dropped to just over $1k. When they had no competition in the server market, they could charge whatever they wanted, and they used the buckets of money made there to fund price wars with AMD on the desktop. When they had no competition in the desktop market, they simply charged whatever they wanted for all their chips.
So today you get cheap servers, sold below cost and funded by Intel's significant cash reserves and still quite high margins in laptops. Tomorrow, when cash-strapped debt-laden AMD folds because they can't afford to sell chips below cost, Intel once again has the market to itself. And. You. Don't. Want. That.
Whether it should be illegal or not is debatable, but whether it's good for you in anything but the very short term is not.
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The entire market suffers from anticompetitive action, not just the second-biggest competitor or the one to complain first. If AMD wants reimbursement, they (and anyone else who wants some) will have to take Intel to court in a civil case, not a criminal one.
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Boeing isn't selling airplanes for less than it costs them to make it. Boeing is also not in the business of bribing airlines to buy the 777 over, say, the A380.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that Intel is an American company, and everything to do with the fact that Intel is selling its products at a loss in an attempt to drive the competition out of business, which is illegal, even in the US, when you control the dominant share of the market.
Re:to be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
The EU does not have the ability to raise or levy taxes. And they fine EU corporations too.
You're just one of those whiny Americans throwing a tantrum because your precious corporations can't ignore all the laws like they do at home.
Re:to be fair... (Score:4, Interesting)
But to do so after the financial collapse and the current crisis it must take a either a superhuman level of irony special kind of lobotomy.
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OK, you call me when that happens. After all the regulated banking systems of Canada and Australia are in such turmoil at the moment in stark contrast to the stable and unshakable US banking system.
Re: (Score:2)
GFY with your ignorant redneck nonsense.
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Maybe AMD can compete with Intel dumping in the market in the same way, but doesn't look like it at the moment. But even if they can, what about others in the market? You end up with only those with deep enough pocket to survive, little to do with the product.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong.
Intel is not punished for being successfull but for breaking the law. Since Intel is a pretty large company which can afford lawyers who can evaluate company actions beforehand, you can safely say that Intel willingly broke the law.
But maybe in your opinion, laissez-faire is the way of life and Al Capone was also punished for being successfull.
Re: (Score:2)
What Intel is being charged for is illegal in the US as well, dumbass. Nothing to do with being successful. Everything to do with breaking the law.
Read this [slashdot.org], you fucking ignorant moron.