Intel Faces $1.3B Fine In Europe

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."

Comments

How Much did they Profit From Their Alleged Abuse?

[Greyfox]

Seems like if you're making tens of billions of dollars annually due to your dominance of the market, a piddly little couple billion dollar fine every few years is a small price to pay. The accusation against Microsoft, similarly, is that they just see the fine as a business expense. When the fine is a drop in the bucket, why not just pay the fine and keep doing what you're doing?

Re:Is there any point?

[dargaud]

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 ?

Re:Then why not give the $ to AMD?

[CopaceticOpus]

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:to be fair...

[Anspen]

Those kind of statements about the unstoppable collapse of those terrible, socialist European nanny states was quite amusing during the last decades when it always was assumed that Europe would soon realise it's folly and live the right, American way.

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.