EC criticised over Intel case
Evidence gathering not up to scratch
The European Union Ombudsman has accused competition regulators of poor record keeping over aspects of the recent anti-trust case against Intel.
The report, which won't have any impact on the verdict or on Intel's €1.06bn fine, is yet to be published but is expected to accuse the competition commission of "maladministration".
The criticism centres on a meeting between investigators and a senior executive from Dell in August 2006, The Wall Street Journal, which saw the document, reports. The Dell exec told the Commission that it felt the performance of AMD's chips was "very poor" - suggesting that was the reason it rejected the processors, not because it was leant on by Intel.
This obviously counters the European Commission's view that Intel used its market strength to force manufacturers to take its chips rather than AMD's.
Well that might be what happened. The ombudsman's main complaint is that there was no formal record made of this meeting, so it is impossible to know exactly what was said.
The Commission argued that it had discretion to include or exclude evidence which may well have been duplicated elsewhere. But the ombudsman believed the Commission had overstepped the mark and that some of the Dell exec's remarks should have been formally recorded.
Even if the Dell executive's comments had been recorded, it is unlikely to have swayed the Commission's final verdict, which found Intel guilty of anticompetitive practices in relation to several manufacturers and a retailer.
The case was marked by more than usual bitterness. In May, Intel accused the Commission of relying on dodgy evidence and ignoring evidence which contradicted its view.
A spokeswoman for the ombudsman declined to comment. ®
COMMENTS
The real issue here is not Intel but the EC
The case against Intel has been found, they've been judged as being guilty as charged.
The issue here is, in bring those charges before the court and in presenting its evidence did the EC itself break the law, by withholding and distorting its own evidence.
As ToddRundgren has remarked, and to which I shall add, the EU Commissioners are a bunch of unelected, know nothing, paid up card carrying members of the European Society of The Good and the Great. In medieval times these people were given titles like Baron, Earl and Duke, now they are EU Commissioners.
Read what Marta Andreasen the former Chief Accountant at the EU has said of it's practices http://policyinstitute.info/news-events/marta-andreasen-lecture/.
Ms Andreasen is now a UK Independent Party (UKIP) Member of the European Parliament.
UKIP has a primary objective of getting the UK out of the EU, and perhaps in so doing to destroy the EU and its Commissioners; just as other European totalitarian dictatorships were despatched in earlier times. So Barroso will suffer a similar fate as the likes of Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Cromwell, Robespierre etc, and if Bliar were to gain the EU Presidency then it would be off with his head too, oh that such a joyous day might prevail.
RP
Intel FUD
As anyone who's been in the PC industry for more than five minutes knows, Intel has been convicted for any number of crimes including tax evasion and violation of anti-trust laws around the world. AMD's chips were always competitive with Intel's as independent tests confirm. It's been documented that Dell was receiving truckloads of (bribe) money from Intel so it's all a moot point as the evidence convicted Intel inspite of Dell's B.S.
Depends on your view.
At that time, the AMD chips did lead the performance on single threaded applications. However, when it came to multitasking, the AMD was far behind the comparable Intel processor. For more home users and gamers this had no influence on their purchasing decision, however for the business user this lack of multitasking horse power could easily be a deal breaker.
Spin ?
The fact that this is deemed worthy of a mention is probably down to some Intel pressmen hyping it. Really it's just a slight comment on the methodology of an irrelevant interview. Irrelevant since this is the same Dell that completely overlooked AMD for years when AMD clearly led on both performance and price.
Re: Maladministration
Maybe inital prototypes performed poorly, and the decision was made on that. Even if it was corrected by the time the actual production units where availble, if the decision was made on that and not due to Intel being illegally anticompetive, it should be a vaild defence.
