Don't like it? Go do business in Bangladesh.

1. Shareholders do NOT control the company, they own parts of it; only voting stock gives those who have enough of it the ability to sit on the board of directors, who employ a CEO to run the company.

2. The EU loves fining AMERICAN companies because it gives them a cash infusion (their economic practices are atrocious, they try to "balance" budgets thinking national budgets work like household and state budgets) while harming us, allowing for their completely non-competitive products to avoid the proper death they deserve (intel gets fines, AMD had fabs in Dresden; MS gets fined almost every day, there are a few Linux distros native to EU, SuSE iirc and Mandriva to name two; Norton and McCrappy go )

3. What is "moral" in a true free market system is what makes the most money, FOR YOU. If that involves breaking the law, even outright assassination would be "moral" as the deaths on competitors would allow your company to monopolize an industry or area, allowing your products to languish and still sell well (a great example is 80's American cars, they sucked ass, but tariffs kept them competitive, another is pre-loaded AV software, its always Norton or McCaffe garbage)

4. Lots of idiots and kids who dont remember the computing industry "back in the day". People complain about MS and Intel, if it werent for those two monopolizing the industry, we probably would have 50 completely incompatible platforms, all about as advanced as PC's were in the mid-90's; In the mid-80's we had Amiga, PC, Atari, Apple, and some others; imagine trying to get software, there will titles you cant find on some platforms and crappy versions on others (very much like console gaming now) and the retail stores would be pissed since they have to allocate shelf space to it all. The MS/Intel monopoly has been a VERY VERY GOOD THING for the PC user and developer, allowing for write once/stock once/ run everywhere functionality that only a standardized platform can provide. For those who think that "the better product will win", look at the PS3, its the "better product" but its over-priced and companies arent developing for it because its hard to develop for and over-priced (meaning their product isn't getting sold either)

On one hand it sucks for the company, but on the other it really sucks what they did to depress AMDs business, so I can't say I feel for them that much. The real victims here (other than AMD) are the shareholders who had nothing to do with Intel's illegal business practices and will have to pay for it (at least somewhat).

is this the beginning of the end for intel?

Finally I can point to articles like this when people ask me why I prefer AMD. Well, this and AMD's prices and platform features.

haha i love seeing all the moronic responses to my post that totally missed the point.

the ones who didnt get it were the ones of old who let the king bed their wives on the marriage night.

"darling, dont you get it? its the law!!"
"I have to let him bing you tonight"

not many real men left in this world.

#47...thanks for allowing me to work in 'thong bikini' successfully into this thread.

to the "it's fair" suckers: it's not about a fining. it's about who gets the money and whether the wrong was righted. It was not. A second wrong was committed.

here is the scenario:

I come over to your hours and spray paint big smilie faces on it. I, then, proceed to drill 1" holes in the walls of your house to help control the home-al warming.

eu police catch me and say "you did a bad thing. you did a lot of damage."
they issue me a fine for 50 grand which is payable to them.
back at the station they take the money and purchase some tasty weed which they proceed to smoke at their leisure.

meanwhile you're sitting there with no compensation and you still have holes in your house. but hey, at least there are smilie faces!
.

This is interesting:

"Another point worthy of note: sales of Atom processors and chipsets accounted for $362 million in the second quarter, an increase of 65% from the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Intel's overall average selling price for microprocessors was lower sequentially. However, the firm said its average microprocessor selling price was "slightly down" even excluding the Atom."

Doesn't this mean that pc's have become too strong for the average user?

So, how does the end user benefit from all this? AMD see no money, Intel finances for R&D have been withheld for one quarter, and everyone is happy (as long as the only people in the venn diagram belong to the EU commission).

End users - delayed product cycles. Oh great.

Intel - 3 months of profit (which would likely hit the shareholders rather than hit their R&D departments)

AMD - They get no money. It might delay Intel's next-gen R&D cycle, but they're still making a killing on their current Core i7 architecture and that'll keep them ahead for some time.

A better solution would always be a static fine to cover the legal costs, with the bulk of the fine being in a form of "take a significant percentage (say 50%) of the offender's operating profit and give to the victim until such time that the breach of IP is satisfied - in other words, until a royalties aggreement is reached, or until intel no longer use AMD's IP.

Sure, that's unlikely to ever happen but I can at least express my concept of a utopian system.

It's time for all the major IT players to be chopped up into thong-bikini sized pieces and bring back *real* risk-taking and innovation.

Just give me the tasty bits.

Too big to fail? More like too big to exist.

Intel committed many bad business practices, but not in isolation. It didn't bully the consumers, but the OEMs. Now OEMs are not skinnybags like the average consumer, and large OEMs like HP, Dell, etc do have financial muscle. So they were like the persons accepting a bribe. Why were they let go scot free? They are after all the ones whose actions affected the consumers and AMD.
Aren't they acomplices in the unfair tdare practices?

I worked out that that fine is worth approximately a third of a USD for each person in the EU, excluding any possible taxes.

I hope I can be forgiven for not caring a toss.

All your billions are belong to us!

And just a general thought... read the link (I repeat it: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1099&... to know how the fines are calculated and if a person or firm affectad can seek damages...

Usually it's a good idea to read a little about what you're about to talk about ;)

Ahh, EU always seeking a payday at the expense of American companies.

Here is an idea EU - make your own companies and sue them!

Haa haa /Nelson

Poor Intel. There are consequences for breaking the law? What a surprise!

quit whining about the eu fining. the amount was fair. it is long past time these companies actually felt the effect of a fine. far to often they get a stupidly small fine compared to the damage they have done. this is fair, and hopefully the EU takes more of these bastards to court.

Next on the docket: Cisco.

EU Competition Commission = grandiose ambulance chaser