AMD steals $1.45 billion from rival Intel

Jun 28th, 2009 by jon beebe in News, Opinion

I recently came across a Yahoo Finance article about Intel’s $1.45 Billion fine in Europe. In it was this:

“The fine against the world’s biggest chip maker represents a huge victory for Intel’s Silicon Valley rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or AMD, the No. 2 supplier of microprocessors to PC makers.”

Let’s contemplate what this “victory” really means.

Intel invests its resources into some of the best and brightest minds in the world. Intel applies itself, and as Capitalism Magazine recognizes “a market for computer chips would not exist at all if Intel did not invent, develop, and constantly innovate the chips that become the brains of computers.” Anyone in the industry can recognize the effect Intel has had on the landscape. To my mind AMD should be thanking Intel for the amazing marketplace, and opportunity, that their pioneering efforts have created.

Instead AMD submits Intel to the looting European Union by suing Intel and lobbying regulators for the past 5 years. The result: the EU is stealing $1.45 billion from Intel. Money that Intel won by selling it’s innovations to consumers who freely paid for them.

Why is all this happening? Neelie Kroes, the EU Competition Commissioner, said “Intel did not compete fairly, frustrating innovation and reducing consumer welfare in the process.” These “unfair” tactics include offering rebates to big customers, a common practice of any business wishing to entice more. The EU requests of Intel were so vague that they left Intel “mystified” about what it should change.

But the real kicker in all of this is what AMD has done to itself and to all who value freedom. Instead of fighting the looters alongside Intel, as it should have done, it feed them to lions. AMD has helped to usher in a dystopian Atlas Shrugged style world in which the best and brightest among us must work for free so the looting masses can feast on their efforts.

I wonder, what will Dirk Meyer, AMD’s Chief Executive who said this decision was “an important step toward establishing a truly competitive market,” be saying when the looters come after him?

Sources

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