I would not call it "crap" so blatantly, because the FTC did in fact found Intel guilty.
Problem is that, like I said, people don't realize when a company (no matter the color or name) starts doing/pushing bad practices (in Intel's case, abusing dominant position) in the market, they start messing around with the hard earned money of the "common folk". And trust me, you and I (and like 99.9% of the forum) is under the "common folk" tag. Those practices must NOT be forgotten; maybe forgiven in favor of "moving along", but never forgotten or they'll do it again (bottom line, remember; screw the people). It's our duty as consumers to stop those behaviors and spread the word about it or companies will keep on doing it.
Anyway, you might think of it as a "mantra" that needs to be spread or information for someone that doesn't have details or just information, but just telling him to stop saying it just because you're tired of reading it... Maybe the good call is to just ignore it if you already understand and know it.
Cheers!
Pretty much this, whenever any company starts abusing their position
NOTHING good can come of it, no matter who that company is.
Also please remember the FTC isn't a court system, their the government agency responsible for investigating anti-trust / anti-competitive / unethical business behavior. When they have findings they do one of two things, give the company a chance to correct their behavior through remedial actions, or take it to the justice department for a full blown investigation / trial. Typically they do the first part as nobody wants to pay the money nor waste the time on a trial, but if a company refuse's to comply they go to the 2nd part (see Microsoft). The FTC will then act as the plaintiff in the court case unless there was criminal activity discovered by the justice department, but that's a different can of worms entirely.
I have heard Intel had the stuff to fight it but still, it is over and should stay that way. AMD and Intel are done with it, lets move forward and keep it out of this thread as much as possible.
Not to be rude but you heard wrong. It wasn't AMD vs Intel, it was AMD + HP + Dell and a few others vs Intel, Michael Dell testified about the deals the Intel Senior VP forced on him. He even provided emails and memos from various parts of Intel about those forced offerings. Dell had on multiple occasions expressed their desire to go with multiple suppliers for their components, and each time Intel threatened to cut their supply if they did that. Dell more then AMD was pushing for that lawsuit. When your customers, the recipients of your "exclusive deals" are pushing the FTC then you know something is wrong.
The exclusive deals go something like this. Your a tier 1 OEM and have tens of thousands of orders to fill, your CPU supplier is Intel. They make you an offer you can't refuse, they'll discount the price on their CPUs by providing rebates on those CPUs (so far so good), with a catch. You must use them as your exclusive provided not only of CPU but also of motherboards and any other system components they offer, those are not discounted, in essence you must buy the entire package. Ok but not illegal yet. The offer comes with another caveat, their supply distribution is determined based on membership in these exclusive deals, should you deffer and decide to provide a non-Intel part anywhere in your offerings, you then get placed on the bottom of the supply list. In effect the 100,000 units they were going to provide you are instead given to your competitors, without those units you can't ship your orders nor meet your demand. Your customers then go to where they can get a computer, your competitors. In effect, any tier 1 who didn't sign up for Intel's plan would be driven out of the market. That is the part they were complaining about and what the FTC investigated (the rest was just added later).
Intel would of lost any court battle, Dell and HP together had more then enough evidence to demonstrate the anti-competitive behavior of Intel and how it was abusing it's market position. Intel chose to settle rather then gamble like Microsoft did, a gamble that they initially lost heavily, but got lucky with an appeals court. Originally MS would of had to be split apart into difference companies (OS / Office products), it would of been disastrous for them as a company that's biggest selling point is integration. The appeals court upheld the verdict but changed the ruling such that MS could stay as a single company but would have to ensure compatibility with other office products and allow integration of other products into the OS. That ruling heralded a changing mindset inside MS and the world is a better place for it.
Just imagine Intel losing and being forced to split their various divisions up by product, that is what the Intel exec's didn't want to gamble on.
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