Intel has been dubbed EVIL

[craftech]

Originally posted by: dmens

Originally posted by: craftech
To further emphasize my point, another EU suit that got little attention in the US media was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...crosoft_antitrust_case

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...rs_us_google_microsoft

The EU and it's media serve the public interest. The US and it's media serve corporate interest.

Gimme a fucking break, that is the lamest shit I have ever heard. The MS case was all over business newspapers, online and offline. The WSJ (the only respectable newspaper at the time and still) covered the case. I did not watch TV back then but I can bet CNBC spent significant airtime on the story.

Do you really expect the shitty tabloids in the US or Europe to cover that case? You think The Sun or Bild will pick up the intel case? I think not. Take your weenie anti-capitalism elsewhere.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305224/

If you read my first post you would see that I was referring to the most popular form of news delivery for the US population. The television "news" networks. Those who read online and in print are better informed sometimes, but that isn't the average American.

Comparing the content of high quality networks like the BBC or Al Jazeera television news to American television "news" is like comparing Albert Einstein to Joe the Plumber.

John

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: craftech

Originally posted by: dmens

Originally posted by: craftech
To further emphasize my point, another EU suit that got little attention in the US media was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...crosoft_antitrust_case

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...rs_us_google_microsoft

The EU and it's media serve the public interest. The US and it's media serve corporate interest.

Gimme a fucking break, that is the lamest shit I have ever heard. The MS case was all over business newspapers, online and offline. The WSJ (the only respectable newspaper at the time and still) covered the case. I did not watch TV back then but I can bet CNBC spent significant airtime on the story.

Do you really expect the shitty tabloids in the US or Europe to cover that case? You think The Sun or Bild will pick up the intel case? I think not. Take your weenie anti-capitalism elsewhere.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305224/

If you read my first post you would see that I was referring to the most popular form of news delivery for the US population. The television "news" networks. Those who read online and in print are better informed sometimes, but that isn't the average American.

Comparing the content of high quality networks like the BBC or Al Jazeera television news to American television "news" is like comparing Albert Einstein to Joe the Plumber.

John

:laugh:

 

[Kuzi]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Not very into international politics.... But i figure intel can always pull out of the country and close there branch if worse came to worse.

1.45 Billion... once again is a LOT of money.

Okey Aigo will shut up from now. :X

I appologize if i offended any EU people, i love your countries tho!

It's not one country you know

The European Union is comprised of 27 countries that account for 1/3 of Intel's yearly revenue. I don't think Intel would be wise to give 33% of the worldwide CPU/Chipset market to AMD, although AMD would be really happy, cause then their market share would jump from 20% to 45% or so

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Not very into international politics.... But i figure intel can always pull out of the country and close there branch if worse came to worse.

1.45 Billion... once again is a LOT of money.

Okey Aigo will shut up from now. :X

I appologize if i offended any EU people, i love your countries tho!

No, you don't just pull out of a country like that in business. You have a presence there, you have long term supply contracts, r&m contracts, you have capex engagements, payments, fixed costs still in process of capitalization, etc etc etc...

At the end, the purpose of this fine is not to compensate AMD or other chip makers. It is a warning to all other companies that may try to do the same.

Ok, now that we are clear that Intel wouldn't have the balls to pull out of EU (lol), we can concentrate on other stuff.

1. Intel gave out rebates to computer manufacturers so that they would buy chips exclusively from Intel.

Sorry but the EU anti-competitive rules are pretty clear on this. Intel must have a legal staff of no less than 100 in the EU, and if these people were aware of this (which I am sure they were, just didn't care for the quick buck) and still allowed this to happen (whistleblower?), they should be fired. If they weren't aware of these tactics used by upper management, they should still get fired for not reading the contracts more carefully.

2. US regulators are also investigating claims against Intel now, but it sure as hell would be a slow process.

I am not sure of Intel's market share within the US Government but Microsoft for example cannot be touched in the U.S. regardless of whatever tactic they use because MS is so highly utilized in US government (and military) systems, it would have massively negative consequences.

3. Also, those of you who claim that the EU is being anti-American, they fined Saint-Gobain (a French conglomerete) about the same amount last year, maybe a tiny bit less.

4. Now, fairly, AMD should stop making stupid decisions and act on this ruling. Puting "EU fines Intel $1.4 billion" on your website is not going to help your sales. Instead, they should replace majority of their senior executives with people who have the balls to challenge Intel not only in design, but also in production and logistics.

5. Finally, the fine should have been higher.

A = (total market volume of CPU sales from 2002 to 2007 in absolute monetary terms ) - (total share of intel in absolute monetary terms)

B = peak marketshare of other manufactuers in absolute monetary terms - lowest marketshare of other manufacturers in absolute monetary terms

Fine= 1 billion Euros * (- CAGR drop of other manufacturers) * (B/A)

 

[MarcVenice]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Kuzi
Since Intel was found guilty, and AMD lost sales (money) and market share because of those illegal practices, why doesn't AMD get all or part of the fine? I mean, it was AMD that sued Intel in the first place. AMD was the company that got harmed. This huge fine all going to the EU doesn't make sense to me.

i wouldnt be ranting if the money was gonna be split and sent to AMD and VIAA.

however we all know exactly whats gonna happen with this money.

the EU will obviously drop it into the states's funds and use it in this time of market failure.

I dont think Intel wants to do this.

Originally posted by: Turkish

Hahahaha you people never cease to amaze me

You don't know anything about how businesses operate, do you?

Not very into international politics.... But i figure intel can always pull out of the country and close there branch if worse came to worse.

1.45 Billion... once again is a LOT of money.

Okey Aigo will shut up from now. :X

I appologize if i offended any EU people, i love your countries tho!

You didn't even put the fine into perspective. Intel made a profit, 3/4 times bigger then the fine, in 2008. It's 4,5% of Intels annual earnings. Intel should have no problem paying this. Also, Intel would hurt far worse by 'pulling' out of the EU-market. Lol thats actaully to ridiculous to even think about.

Also Intel would have 'lost' a lot more money, had they NOT used their malpractices.

For the ones who don't understand what Intel did wrong, go get a clue.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Kuzi
Since Intel was found guilty, and AMD lost sales (money) and market share because of those illegal practices, why doesn't AMD get all or part of the fine? I mean, it was AMD that sued Intel in the first place. AMD was the company that got harmed. This huge fine all going to the EU doesn't make sense to me.

i wouldnt be ranting if the money was gonna be split and sent to AMD and VIAA.

however we all know exactly whats gonna happen with this money.

the EU will obviously drop it into the states's funds and use it in this time of market failure.

I dont think Intel wants to do this.

Originally posted by: Turkish

Hahahaha you people never cease to amaze me

You don't know anything about how businesses operate, do you?

Not very into international politics.... But i figure intel can always pull out of the country and close there branch if worse came to worse.

1.45 Billion... once again is a LOT of money.

Okey Aigo will shut up from now. :X

I appologize if i offended any EU people, i love your countries tho!

You didn't even put the fine into perspective. Intel made a profit, 3/4 times bigger then the fine, in 2008. It's 4,5% of Intels annual earnings. Intel should have no problem paying this. Also, Intel would hurt far worse by 'pulling' out of the EU-market. Lol thats actaully to ridiculous to even think about.

Also Intel would have 'lost' a lot more money, had they NOT used their malpractices.

For the ones who don't understand what Intel did wrong, go get a clue.

You need to understand the difference between American and Europe, Marc

Europe hates dirty monopolies .. America has been conditioned to be slaves and accept mega business trampling ethics

And we are asking AMD right now - as i type - what THEY think of it; we have the 1st interview

 

[Turkish]

apoppin, can you let them know that I would gladly move to the US from Spain if they need a commercial controller Good luck with the interview.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Turkish
apoppin, can you let them know that I would gladly move to the US from Spain if they need a commercial controller Good luck with the interview.

i am not handling the interview myself; i got a real pro working for us doing it.

i am not so sure what you mean - send me a PM

 

[Nathelion]

Originally posted by: bobman0330

Originally posted by: Forumpanda

Originally posted by: IdontcareOn the flipside...its got to kinda irk you guys that this went on for 5 years before this government entity decided to do something about it on your behalf.

Indeed, presumably quite fair number of people must have been 'in the know' on this and I guess decided it was not thier job to do something about it.

Whenever news like this surfaces, I always hear someone misplay the free market card and argue that its the EU who are evil. This just further makes me scratch my head and be happy we didn't have cooperations this size around 5000 years ago, or we would still be licensing fire by paying 2 stone axes a week.

I'm not a total free market zealot, but this decision is pretty hard to justify with modern antitrust economics. Vertical agreements (between producers and distributors) are just not very good at producing excess profits for firms. The EU is alleging that Intel increased its marketshare by paying its distributors. As long as its distributors are in a competitive market, that money (or at least a big chunk of it) ends up as lower prices to the consumer. Economically, it's not different from Intel just slashing prices.

You could make a predatory pricing argument, but it's laughable considering the scale of the alleged activities, and the fact that AMD was profitable at the end of the Netburst period.

The whole point of the antitrust case is not that Intel made excessive profits. In fact, Intel probably lost money on their discount practices. The point is that Intel prevented AMD from getting revenue. Since Intel is larger, it could much better afford the costs of the discounts than AMD could afford the lost revenue. Another cornerstone of the argument is that while there was competition in the market (AMD), that competition was capacity constrained. AMD simply could not supply an OEM with all the chips it needed, and Intel effectively prevented it from supplying only part of those chips. If AMD had not been capacity constrained, then yeah, Intel's tactics would have been suicidal. But that was not the case.

 

[Sureshot324]

Originally posted by: OCguy
In all honesty, it just needs to be over with. Cut the socialists a check, be done with it, and continue making the #1 processors in the world.

Anti-monopolist policies are not socialist. If governments did nothing to control monopolies, we would eventually be ruled by just one super-corporation. This would basically be socialism since everyone's working for the same company and there's no competition.

 

[Forumpanda]

Must admit I was expecting more from long term AT posters than:
'Intel should pull out of the EU' .. 'EU is stealing from the American economy' .. 'wah wah EU should not mess with my American company'.

I guess people have problems understanding large numbers, the fine is much less than Intel made from the EU market in that period, it is much less than Intel will make from the EU market in the future.

Pulling out of the EU market would be the same as sending AMD billions of dollars each year, something I am sure they are not interested in.
Any processor Intel sells is a processor AMD does not sell.

The reason AMD will not get any of this money is because believe it or not the European public servants are not the errand boys of AMD or any other corporation, it is up to AMD to pay their own lawyers and make their own lawsuit if they believe Intel owes them some form of compensation.

Intel used their exclusivity to take excessive amounts of money for their products, money which came out of many different European citizens over a period of many years, a small portion of those money are now going back to benefit that same group of citizens, what is so wrong about that?

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: bgeh

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: bgeh
aigo: The EU represents 30% of global CPU sales, so you're not too right either http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30717099/

30% vs. 70%

compared to closing a division vs paying 1.45 Billion US dollars.

Which path do you think intel will look at expecially with today's slumming market?

There not gonna pay 1 billion... half that ammount maybe.. but 1.45 Billion, i highly doubt it.

Have you forgotten about Asia? Africa? Latin America? Asia's pretty big too you know......

I may have no figures about the regional marketshare but I'd argue that the EU would be comparable to the US in terms of global chip sales, if not slightly larger.

I would very much like to see Intel give up the EU. I would also like very much to see AMD supply the EU and the rest of the world with present fabs .

I would very much like to see AMD alone in the EU as only supplier . WE all know where those pricies would go . Than the EU would have what It wants. A profitable AMD at expense of tax payer. The EU is a dead stagnit market . With everthing moving east . They have know resorces other than what they steal from Africia. And Chinias about to stop that thanks to Obama. You might say Obama is between a rock and a hard place on this issue. LOL. FREE AFRICIA. FROM Imperalist EU. Its happening . You bloodsuckers are threw.

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: zerogear
I've always wondered, if they did remove IE, for example from Windows, how would people get other browsers?

hahaahahahaaa...

Free AOL cd's.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: zerogear
I've always wondered, if they did remove IE, for example from Windows, how would people get other browsers?

The same way we used to get them; buy them at the store.

 

[Forumpanda]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
Intel probably lost money on their discount practices. The point is that Intel prevented AMD from getting revenue. Since Intel is larger, it could much better afford the costs of the discounts than AMD could afford the lost revenue.

Another cornerstone of the argument is that while there was competition in the market (AMD), that competition was capacity constrained. AMD simply could not supply an OEM with all the chips it needed, and Intel effectively prevented it from supplying only part of those chips. If AMD had not been capacity constrained, then yeah, Intel's tactics would have been suicidal. But that was not the case.

Close but not entirely true, lowering prices and taking a loss on sale in order to shut out your competition and to preserve market/mind share while denying your competition revenue is a perfectly legal strategy. See recent nVidia/ATI battles.

However what Intel did was give monetary incentives to resellers only to sell Intel CPU's, thus The resellers made extra profit because not only did they get to sell higher prices Intel products, they also got money from Intel directly.
And when Intel was the only game in town, Intel could then make money on sales by selling the products at prices it would not be able to maintain, if AMD was competing on even grounds.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/la...ml?articleID=217400642


For example do you really believe that a tech company like Intel cannot back up their emails?
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-...ils-in-Antitrust-Case/

Obviously they were hiding something and they knew it.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
How about Intel just pulls all Intel products from the shelves in the EU instead? While we're at it, let's pull all Microsoft licenses at the same time.

That would be completely awesome! Within 3 years we would have a competing OS to Windows where we would actually have a choice when purchasing a PC. Either MS would increase their quality, lower their price, or we would have a competitor that we could buy from that would be doing one of the above (or maybe even both).

Same with CPU's. Intel was like MS not long ago, with poor quality and high prices, but AMD was able to take advantage of that and forced Intel to get back to making higher quality processors at lower prices. If AMD were given more of the market, we would have even more competition other than just the low-mid range products. Of course, AMD might end up with the stronger position after a while in this case 9since now they would have the advantage), and they could end up in a defacto monopoly if Intel isn't allows back into the EU after a time.

I can't imagine either of these things happening. I would like it to happen on the software side, since MS has such a debilitating monopoly that no-one seems able to butt their way into that market, even though it should be an easy market to get into (it doesn't require a lot of starting capital, requires mostly just development costs, and has a very high profit margin; obviously something is not right if MS has no real competition in that field.)

 

[dmens]

Originally posted by: craftech
If you read my first post you would see that I was referring to the most popular form of news delivery for the US population. The television "news" networks. Those who read online and in print are better informed sometimes, but that isn't the average American.

Comparing the content of high quality networks like the BBC or Al Jazeera television news to American television "news" is like comparing Albert Einstein to Joe the Plumber.

John

Typical, you ignore the fact that the US media offers a vast and diverse set of viewpoints, as opposed to the government regulated and almost monopolized media offerings in Europe. Focusing on the trashy tabloid news networks and saying they constitute the US media is basically saying The Sun represents British media because it is the most popular.

BBC is high quality? Is this the same network whose ombudsman openly admitted has a serious leftist bias issue but is powerless to do anything about it? Or Al Jazzera, which runs a separate Middle East broadcast overrun with racist demagoguery?

The sad thing is people are forced to watch that garbage with no alternative. In the US, people can just change the channel, or buy a better newspaper.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
For the fine, what does it go towards? Some blanket EU bank account?

Answer from the EU Press Release:

Where does the money go?

Once final judgment has been delivered in any appeals before the Court of First Instance (CFI) and the Court of Justice, the money goes into the EU?s central budget, thus reducing the contributions that Member States pay to the EU.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
I'm not much into legal practice, but Intel can drag this out, right? I also wonder where this money is going.

Answer from the EU Press Release:

Does Intel have to pay the fine if it appeals to the European Court of First Instance (CFI)?

Yes. In case of appeals to the CFI, it is normal practice that the fine is paid into a blocked bank account pending the final outcome of the appeals process. Any fine that is provisionally paid will produce interest based on the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its main refinancing operations. In exceptional circumstances, companies may be allowed to cover the amount of the fine by a bank guarantee at a higher interest rate.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Martimus
I can't imagine either of these things happening. I would like it to happen on the software side, since MS has such a debilitating monopoly that no-one seems able to butt their way into that market, even though it should be an easy market to get into (it doesn't require a lot of starting capital, requires mostly just development costs, and has a very high profit margin; obviously something is not right if MS has no real competition in that field.)

An operating system requires a huge amount of hardware support. Linux has been around for more than 10 years and it still has horrible support for a lot of things.

 

[IlllI]

i remember those 'incentives' aka kickbacks that intel gave dell for exclusively only selling their chips.

i remember some article many years ago that sellers were only able to get those kickbacks if they sold a certain quota of intel chips. i think this quota was set by intel. that left companies with less of an option to sell amd b/c of fear of not selling as many intel chips as they needed in order to get their incentive rebates (or whatever they were called)


ps. intel was also found guilty a few years back in South Korea and Japan for anti-competitive practices

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Forumpanda
Must admit I was expecting more from long term AT posters than:
'Intel should pull out of the EU' .. 'EU is stealing from the American economy' .. 'wah wah EU should not mess with my American company'.

I agree. It's disappointing that some posters are more interested in pushing their personal agendas & FUD.

 

[geokilla]

I like this fine. I was curious as to why the major OEM manufacturers didn't sell systems equipped with AMD CPUs, such as MGD, Dell, HP etc. Now, we might have found out why they didn't sell systems equipped with AMD CPUs and why Intel deserves this fine.

Personally, I believe North America needs to work harder to prevent company from being monopolies like Microsoft and Intel.

 

[OCGuy]

This changes nothing.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: IlllI
i remember those 'incentives' aka kickbacks that intel gave dell for exclusively only selling their chips.

i remember some article many years ago that sellers were only able to get those kickbacks if they sold a certain quota of intel chips. i think this quota was set by intel. that left companies with less of an option to sell amd b/c of fear of not selling as many intel chips as they needed in order to get their incentive rebates (or whatever they were called)


ps. intel was also found guilty a few years back in South Korea and Japan for anti-competitive practices

Yes Japan in 2005 and S Korea in 2008

Sure looks like a monopolistic trend - it is bad for the consumer, only here America tolerates mega corporation's abuse of us
- and we got our interview. AMD is getting busy

 

[waffleironhead]

Originally posted by: OCguy
This changes nothing.

Nope, Intel will keep acting the same and avoiding the fines as much as they can.