By Erin Hayes
Intel Held Accountable for Breaking Antitrust Law
We here at WhatsUp Gold have blogged about antitrust issues in the past – mostly concerning the monopoly some cable companies enjoy in areas of the U.S.
So today we’d like to acknowledge a big win for the little guy – in the European Union.
The E. U. fined Intel Corp. a record 1.06 billion ($1.45 billion) today for abusing its dominance in the market and using illegal sales tactics to shut out smaller rival AMD.
(You may remember Microsoft Corp. receiving the E.U.’s former record-breaking fine [899 million euros] for monopoly abuse last year.)
Of course Intel calls the E.U.’s decision “wrong” and announced it would appeal.
According to the European Commission’s eight year investigation into the Santa Clara, Calif. Base company, Intel’s ubiquitous x86 CPU chips were only ubiquitous because the company paid manufactures Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC as well as retailers to postpone, cancel or avoid using or selling AMD’s products.
Whoa. So what was Intel’s response to this finding?
“There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers,” Intel’s prez and CEO Paul Otellini asserted in his lengthy response denying any wrong doing.
The E.U. disagrees.
“Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years,” said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. “Such a serious and sustained violation of the EU’s antitrust rules cannot be tolerated.”
In fact, European consumers group BEUC is taking this a step further and encourages European customers to file civil suits against the microchip giant.
“Intel should be liable to compensate the victims of its illegal practices,” BEUC head Monique Goyens stated. “Consumers have been paying too much for their computers and they should be compensated.”
Here, Here!
Intel currently maintains a share of about 80 percent of the European x86 CPU market.
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