Looks like Intel is in a bit of Dutch. The Federal Trade Commission sued the company for using its position in the market “to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly.” Not good, no.
This may seem strange in the wake of the $1.25 billion settlement between Intel and AMD, the Barcelona to Intel’s Real Madrid. But that hasn’t stopped the FTC from saying that Intel:
has engaged in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly. It’s been running roughshod over the principles of fair play and the laws protecting competition on the merits.
There’s not too much wiggle room in that statement, now is there?
Of course, Intel has fired back and said that the FTC’s case is “misguided and unwarranted.”
This will drag on for some time.
So what are the FTC’s major complaints?
One of the main things is that Intel feels that, in the future, GPUs will be just as important as CPUs going forward. To that end, Intel will make it so that GPUs from rival companies don’t play nicely with its CPUs. The fear is that Intel could make it so difficult for rival GPU manufacturers to create properly working GPUs that Intel could, one day, produce a GPU that immediately puts all the others guys out of business.
I wonder if Intel will ever develop the anti-competitive reputation that dogged Microsoft back in the day, if not to this day.
On a lighter note, here’s Conan visiting Intel’s headquarters a little while ago.