[your local physicist]

My take is that Intel's agreements with customers didn't contractually require customers to not buy chips from AMD, but instead Intel gave customers an economic incentive to not buy from AMD. It's called price competition and volume discounts, and it goes on constantly in all industries and it's not illegal. This fine by the EU is nothing more than attempted theft of $1.45 billion by EU bureaucrats from a highly successful American company. They want Intel's money to pay for more jobs in their bureaucracies (and lavish travel budgets), which the EU needs to reduce chronically high unemployment caused by over-regulation and overtaxation of business.

It's no coincidence that the EU is attempting this theft of $1.45 billion in the first year of the BHO administration. They wouldn't have dared try this kind of brazen theft while Bush was in office, because he would have stood up for Intel and told the EU that he would retaliate against European companies if the EU attempted this massive theft against Intel. We can now expect much more harassment of American companies and more difficulty exporting our products under the current administration. (...and they stay they're "trying to create jobs.")

[mamelukesabre]

I think they already did it with microsoft.

[Use as Directed]

AMD vs Intel has been going on for quite a while now.

The EU ruling is not the first anticompetitive judgment against Intel. South Korea and Japan have also found that the incentives offered in conjunction with exclusive purchases of Intel chips result in a monopoly of sorts.

[GeronL]

Shakedown