European Commission Hits Intel With New Fine Over Antitrust Findings (theregister.com) 13
The European Commission has re-imposed a fine of about $400 million on chipmaker Intel for abusing its dominant position in the x86 processor market. The move is the latest twist in an antitrust saga that has been now running for more than two decades. The Register: According to the Commission, the fine is in response to previously established anticompetitive practices by the silicon giant, aimed at excluding competitors from the market in breach of EU competition rules. The original fine handed to Intel in 2009 was for $1.2 billion, based on findings that the company had given incentives to PC makers to use its CPUs instead of those from rivals, or else delay the launch of specific products containing rival chips.
These incentives consisted of wholly or partially hidden rebates for using Intel chips, or payments in order to delay launching products with rival chips, amounting to so-called "naked restrictions." It ultimately goes back to complaints from rival CPU maker AMD in 2000 and again in 2003 that Intel was engaging in anticompetitive conduct by offering rebates to vendors to favor Intel components. Intel fought the decision, but an appeal by the Silicon Valley outfit to have it overturned was initially denied in 2014. Then in 2022, the EU General Court partially annulled the 2009 ruling by the Commission, in particular the findings related to Intel's conditional rebates, and went on to nix the fine imposed on the company in its entirety.
These incentives consisted of wholly or partially hidden rebates for using Intel chips, or payments in order to delay launching products with rival chips, amounting to so-called "naked restrictions." It ultimately goes back to complaints from rival CPU maker AMD in 2000 and again in 2003 that Intel was engaging in anticompetitive conduct by offering rebates to vendors to favor Intel components. Intel fought the decision, but an appeal by the Silicon Valley outfit to have it overturned was initially denied in 2014. Then in 2022, the EU General Court partially annulled the 2009 ruling by the Commission, in particular the findings related to Intel's conditional rebates, and went on to nix the fine imposed on the company in its entirety.
Too little too late (Score:4, Insightful)
They made billions and pay peanuts.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Too little too late (Score:3)
The fine was previously annulled. That implies whatever they did was either not illegal or time for pursuing legal action had expired.
EC needs money though, this is for stuff that happened 20 years ago, itâ(TM)s a bit late IMHO.
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Justice delayed is justice denied. This is obviously classism and corruption. Once again proving that the rich and their corporations are above our laws. These fines would just be paid from undeserved windfall profits anyways. The whole economy is a classist scam.
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400 million is nothing to sniff at, but it's not just the one fine. If they carry on doing it, the fines get bigger. The fact that it will result in a change of behaviour from Intel (already has done in fact) is important too.
Re: RiscV (Score:2)
You do realise ARM came out of the UK. Also, while the EU doesnâ(TM)t have its own fabs, it does have one of the most critical companies to building fabs, in the form of ASML.
All that said, it would be good to see an EU based fab. Right now Intel and TSMC were both mentioned at planning to expand their, but I am not sure where they are at?
Corporate surveillance (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Or intel had a superior product at a time when other silicon printers putting out x86 clones were down and out. I built thousands of machines from 1997-2001 for Y2K customer boom, then slot 1/2, then P4. There was no other choice than intel, the chipsets attached simply were better suppor
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Back in the day, up through about the Pentium II, only Intel could make a chipset worth one tenth of one shit. Their processors were nothing special for the most part (sometimes Intel was a little faster, sometimes AMD was) but the supporting chips were the best by far.
Then AMD started making chipsets for their own hardware so we didn't need that VIA bullshit any more and guess what, no more reason to run Intel.
The problem wasn't drivers. The problem was hardware.
Re: (Score:1)
You know how corporations set up huge persistent, pernicious dragnet surveillance operations on us ordinary citizens? It'd seem that those who really need watching are the corporations. How about we put them under persistent, pernicious targeted surveillance to find out their misdeeds as & when they commit them? They do seem to be a particularly high-risk group, don't they?
Are you saying corporations are extraordinary citizens instead of ordinary citizens?
Or saying only extraordinary citizens work at corporations and not ordinary citizens?
A corporation is composed of people. You surveil people, you suveil corporations.
Not understanding your point.
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strategy (Score:2)
The EU strategy to build their own semiconductor industry is to destroy or degrade the US semiconductor industry.