Looks like the EU folks are out to take a bite out of Intel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7241022.stmIntel, the world's biggest computer chipmaker, has been raided by European Union competition regulators amid claims it abused its market position.
Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, said the regulators raided the company's office in Munich, Germany.
The investigation started after a complaint from Intel's smaller rival AMD.
The initial findings of a probe by the Commission unveiled last summer concluded that the chip firm engaged in anti-competitive action to thwart AMD.
It accused the world's largest chipmaker of giving rebates to customers provided they bought Intel products and offering incentives to companies to delay or cancel products containing AMD technology.
Intel faces a closed hearing in Brussels on 11 and 12 March on the charges.
European regulators have the power to fine Intel up to 10% of annual turnover if they find it guilty of stifling competition.
Whilst Intel are stating publicly that their efforts are "legal" whats important to me knowing how lax many laws are is was their practice ethical or moraly justified and if they have been doing whats been claimed above they fail on both counts, I must admit however to having a strong bias again intel chips,the current generation have added DRM embeded into the CPU to allow a complete lockdown of your machine should the operating system vendor so wish, I would rather not hand control over what my machine does to Microsoft and suggest folks you dont get hoodwinked by this stealth introduction of restrictive technology and choose non Intel next time around.
