Intel to EU watchdogs: 'It's AMD's fault'

Our cheating didn't work that well - so we're innocent

Intel don't seem to understand how laws work. They claim that their actions did not have "immediate, substantial, direct and foreseeable effects" on AMD's EU sales. Even if that were true, their actions were not legal and that is why they are being fined.

fine was too small

any fine like this that a company can pay off in a single quarter is too small. Intel is a big company, should be sized to make more of a dent, perhaps 5-6-10x the original amount. They don't need to pay it all at once, spread it out..

Courts seem to hand fines down to individuals on a fairly regular basis it seems like that would take many, many years to pay off.

Intel is right

The fine should really be 500 BILLION Euro for their criminal acts.

I'm surprised it isn't the consumers fault.

Intel, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, all to quite a substantial degree owe their success to the consumers of their products, not just to their marketing tactics. Intels practices might have been acceptable whilst there was still competition between TI, Zilog, Motorola and others for the desktop market, but once Wintel took the market, those tactics have become manifestly unfair and monopolistic. Long ago Intels competitors could afford to use the same tactics to win market share, but now, they just can't compete on those terms.

In business we buy stuff that we can defend our decisions on, so the old "You won't get fire for buying ....." still holds true. I actually, when I can take a longer view, I want AMD, SUN, Apple and others in the market because I can see the market stagnating if they aren't there. The big companies have no incentive to innovate, or buy innovation, if there is no competition.

However CEOs and CFOs don't care about these long term goals, only that their costs are lower than their competitors this year. IT is also generally viewed as a cost, not a benefit, so if IT costs go up for everybody, because IT is not competing, then it's not a big problem.

This is a bit simplistic, but as a basic model it's true.

It has to be big enough to hurt

If the fine is to act as a deterrent, it has to hurt. And since it's a company and not an individual, it has to be big enough to cause real anguish for the executives, who make the decisions even though they're not personally paying the fine.

So how big is big enough for the CEO and the board of directors to think "wow, that was really stupid, I could lose my cushy job over this, and other companies will be afraid to hire me because I do stupid shit"? Certainly more than a billion. Maybe 10 billion would be enough to get some of the top management fired and put a good scare into the ones who are left.

Absolutely Fine

I expect that the fine is probably too low. It should work out at more than the profit they made over several years of illegal anti competitive behaviour to act as an effective deterrent.

Ah, so that will be Google's defence then too..

After all, Google does not have "immediate, substantial, direct and foreseeable effects" on your privacy. Only the Swiss had the nerve to examine the substance of their offering and simply ask them to have some respect for privacy laws (well, and Japan). Ditto Farcebook.

Erosion never happens all at once - that's why it's called "erosion" and not "removal". Keep sleepwalking - that's how you got a CCTV based Panoptikon.

The best entertainment is watching the Google fans: somehow you're paid by MS if you voice concern about what they're doing - fantastic..

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Ad-hominem? Not exactly

Up to the point you're found guilty, you're due a fair trial on the evidence. But once you're found guilty, sentencing is necessarily based on whether you've done it before. If you've already been found guilty of something three times, and you do it again and are found guilty again, you can expect the results to be harsher next time.

And then suppose you moan about the fact that you've had a harsher result, without accepting that you did anything wrong, after having previously been done for it three times. Commenting on this apparent inability to accept the rule of law isn't an ad-hominem attack, it's a valid observation that the person/organisation has a well-established pattern of behaving this way.

The fine should definitely NOT go to AMD

Competition law does not work that way, nor should it.

Competition Law is meant to detect harm to the CONSUMER, not to competitors.

Preventing a competitor from doing business is bad for consumers if it raises the price, or decreases the quality, in the long run.

For this reason, the anti-competitive companies are fined and the money goes to the representatives of the consumers, that is, the states.

The competitor can also sue for damages, but that's a different point entirely, and you should not get confused between the two.

It would be of the utmost ultra-liberal stupidity to say that when customers are hurt, companies should get the money for it.

*I* ended up paying my processing cycles more because of the reduced competition, so *I* should get the money back, for instance by paying less taxes thanks to the billion the states get back (or to the billion less in deficit that I'll end up paying for because governments can't control spending, but at least, they'll borrow one less billion this year, and that's an other issue anyway).

I'm very happy if, in addition to that, AMD investors (through AMD itself) can also get some money from Intel investors (through reduced Intel earnings), but I fail to understand people here who would consider the harm to society should be ignored and only the harm to AMD investors should be considered.

@Michelle Knight

As I understand it, Intel were offering incentives for suppliers and OEM's to *not* buy AMD CPU's\machines - even going as far as saying "you can only have this many CPU's if you don't use x amount of AMD's". I think at one point AMD couldn't even give away a batch of CPU's for free to Dell (I think) because of the agreement they had with Intel. It's all reported right here on the reg :)

Microsoft aren't really doing that in your example, just offering incentives that Linux can't really beat. That's not unfair business practices, just really annoying!

Greg10 -> 10 for you

You certainly hit the point here..

Claerly Intel used illegal actions to protect its marketshare, and with these practices has prevented AMD from gaining marketshare and got time to refine their processors.

The damage to AMD is clear, as should be the damage to the consumers: we got ripped off.

Reality check

"*I* ended up paying my processing cycles more because of the reduced competition, so *I* should get the money back, for instance by paying less taxes thanks to the billion the states get back (or to the billion less in deficit that I'll end up paying for because governments can't control spending, but at least, they'll borrow one less billion this year, and that's an other issue anyway)." .... By Greg 10 Posted Wednesday 16th September 2009 09:57 GMT

And if you believe you'll benefit from any windfall, Greg 10, rather than the "representatives of the consumer" sqirrelling it away somewhere for their own benefit, I suppose you would also be believing in the tooth fairy.

And when that is the case, Intel will probably tell them to whistle "Dixie"... or they could even do the right thing and pay AMD direct....... after all, the EU have already been paid for all their work in bringing the prosecution by virtue of their generous salaries.

ATI graphics on intel motherboards

When I was building a PC last year, I decided that on-board graphics would be good enough for my needs, and be more power efficient. I knew that i wanted an Intel CPU, because at that point, the Core 2 Duo's had clearly taken the performance mantle from AMD, and given my druthers, I'd have preferred an ATI graphics chip.

But try as i might, I couldn't find an LGA775 motherboard with up to date ATI graphics on board. I could have Intel or NVidia graphics with my Intel CPU or and AMD CPU with my ATI onboard graphics.

I got the impression at the time that this was AMDs doing, but I don't know for sure. Even today, I can get Intel socketed motherboards with Intel, NVidia, S3, Trident or Via IGPs, or ATI socketed motherboards with AMD or NVidia IGPs. Was there any ant-competitive behaviour going on there, because as a consumer, I definitely felt harmed by this.