US FTC Sues Intel For Anti-Competitive Practices

Vigile writes "And here Intel was about to get out of 2009 with only a modestly embarrassing year. While Intel and AMD settled their own antitrust and patent lawsuits in November, the FTC didn't think that was good enough and has decided to sue Intel for anti-competitive practices. While the suits in Europe and in the US civil courts have hurt Intel's pocketbook and its reputation, the FTC lawsuit could very likely be the most damaging towards the company's ability to practice business as they see fit. The official hearing is set for September of 2010 but we will likely hear news filtering out about the evidence and charges well before that. One interesting charge that has already arisen: that Intel systematically changed its widely-used compiler to stunt the performance of competing processors."

Intel

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

Our competitive practices aren't like your competitive practices.

Re:Well, duh.

[byteherder]

There is no conspiracy: This is business. Business is inherently anti-competitive. If I'm competing with you, I want you out of the game, and just like in a video game, I will use combo attacks and drop-kick you right as you get up (repeatedly) to keep you from recovering until you throw the controller at me. That's just how the game is played. (See slashdot, we can avoid car analogies!)

Let's make the car analogy... In Indy car racing, you are not allowed to smash into your opponent over and over again until his car is a smoking pile of metal and then run him over as he leaves the flaming wreckage. This is against the rules.

There are rules in business just as in car racing. Intel broke them. Now they have to face the music.