Posted on 05/13/2009 4:26:12 AM PDT by paudio
The verdict is in and it's huge. As expected, the EU is fining Intel a record €1.06 billion or $1.45 billion (Billion!) dollars due to violations of antitrust rules in Europe. The record fine surpasses that of the €497 million fine originally levied against Microsoft. The EU ruled that Intel illegally used hidden rebates to squeeze rivals out of the marketplace for CPUs. In a statement issued by European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the EC said,
(Excerpt) Read more at engadget.com ...
Definitely not directed to you. Just for your information.
Let’s have our country stick to the rule of law and not bow to politics or socialism.
We’ve got enough government and politics for now.
The EU is a monster aka socialist empire. It will ruin itself.
Very thoughtful comments on unions. That is a line of reasoning you can use with Libs.
Maybe!
“Our companies should boycott Europe.”
Amen. If you think Europe is Amerca’s ally think again.
Problem is that 0bama will drive more American companies to Europe because of high taxes. Then we will become more and more like Honduras.
Your links don’t support your contention that Intel was on the brink of going belly-up.
I knew some of its top process engineers well in the timeframe in question. Unless my incipient Alzheimer’s has taken a real leap in the past hour, at no point were they on any brink of any belly-up.
This will strain relations with the neo-Soviet EU.
Digital received the sale of that fab to Intel at a very nice price.
I never said Intel couldn’t run their plants well. I just said they stole some of the technology they sell. At least according to court documents and public statements at the time.
If Intel wasn’t guilty they wouldn’t have purchased the building, equipment, and employees where the technology was made.
I remember very vividly the number of irate customers that wanted to return their machine and or sue INTEL. The CEO at the time stated that there was nothing wrong with their CPU's for the average user, and as such they would not be replacing them. Within 1 week of his idiotic statement, our phones were ringing off the hook.
Not long after, INTEL decided that they would in fact replace said CPU's, talk in the industry was that INTEL was getting an earful from their distributors and customers. Having said that, what do you think would have happened if he stuck by his original statement?
And...
At no point were they “at the brink of going belly up”...
Did you know that the first IBM PC, the PC-1 had a ROM bug that caused IBM’s supplied Basic to give a seriously wrong result by doing a specific combination of addition followed by a divide?
That was fun...
“Digital received the sale of that fab to Intel at a very nice price”
$700 million was reported to have been paid for the fab. I don’t know what you mean “nice price”? Are you trying to say Intel paid more than it was worth?
“If Intel wasn’t guilty they wouldn’t have purchased the building, equipment, and employees where the technology was made”
Intel still has the fab and it has been a profitable operation. Digital got nothing for the claim that Intel stole their technology. Why didn’t they get at least a $1.45 billion?
The subject matter though is the fine that the EU levied against Intel. Apparently you agree that the fine is appropriate and not excessive and glad to see that the EU is intervening in America’s technology. I don’t!
“Apparently you agree that the fine is appropriate and not excessive and glad to see that the EU is intervening in America’s technology. I don’t!”
really where did I ever say that? the EU is an oppressive regime
Well, let’s both agree that Intel had a PR nightmare on their hands. We can disagree about Intel being on any sort of financial brink when they finally caved, though that may well have come as their OEMs were starting to riot. And Intel caved because the CEO’s original statement (that the average user would see a math error only every gazillion years) was quickly proven untrue. I remember typing in a simple formula into Excel which resulted in a bogus answer. That sort of thing spread like wildfire, exposing the CEO as either a liar or clueless or both, and Intel was cornered. The result was a $500 million charge against earnings to pay for the recall. That surely pinched, but let’s face it, that’s a small fraction of what Intel earned even then.
One consequence of this affair was one of the most annoying advertising blitzes ever, shortly after the dust settled. Remember the jitterbugging cleanroom guys, dancing around in bunny suits? The horror!
“really where did I ever say that?”
Well what you said was that Intel stole Dec technology and they did not steal Dec’s technology. They were allegations made by the Dec CEO Bill Palmer at the time Dec was going and in fact Dec went broke. The company was split up and Intel bought the fabs and the allegations were dropped.
‘Well what you said was that Intel stole Dec technology and they did not steal Dec’s technology”
Well Dec didn’t give the technology to them so how exactly did they get it?
“Well Dec didn’t give the technology to them so how exactly did they get it?”
What technology are you talking about that Intel stole? You keep saying Intel stole Dec technology. What did they stesl?
You never answered whether you thought the price of the Hudson, Mass fab was excessive or not?
It’s legal for a monopolist to compete on price, but when they tie rebates or price incentives to excluding the competitors product then they are engaged in behavior that is counter to a free market. I’m not sure exactly what Intel was doing, but I suspect it was analogous to MS deals that required a license payment for every PC shipped by companies they do business with regardless of whether or not Windows was installed. Note that companies that are not considered monopolies get to make the deals that a monopolist would be fined for making.
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