[Infowarrior] - FTC sues chip-king Intel for 'anti-competitive tactics'

[Richard Forno]

FTC sues chip-king Intel for 'anti-competitive tactics'
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/12/ftc_sues_chip-king_intel_for_a.html?hpid=topnews

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Intel, saying the chip-making  
king has "illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to  
stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly."

Quoting from the release on the FTC Web site, which hit moments ago:  
"In its complaint, the FTC alleges that Intel has waged a systematic  
campaign to shut out rivals’ competing microchips by cutting off their  
access to the marketplace. In the process, Intel deprived consumers of  
choice and innovation in the microchips that comprise the computers’  
central processing unit, or CPU."

You can read the entire release by clicking here.

This is big, big news and a clear sign of the FTC's new muscularity in  
taking on corporate giants.

 From the FTC release:

"The FTC’s administrative complaint charges that Intel carried out its  
anticompetitive campaign using threats and rewards aimed at the  
world’s largest computer manufacturers, including Dell, Hewlett- 
Packard, and IBM, to coerce them not to buy rival computer CPU chips.  
Intel also used this practice, known as exclusive or restrictive  
dealing, to prevent computer makers from marketing any machines with  
non-Intel computer chips.

In addition, allegedly, Intel secretly redesigned key software, known  
as a compiler, in a way that deliberately stunted the performance of  
competitors’ CPU chips. Intel told its customers and the public that  
software performed better on Intel CPUs than on competitors’ CPUs, but  
the company deceived them by failing to disclose that these  
differences were due largely or entirely to Intel’s compiler design."

-- Frank Ahrens