Unlike Microsoft, Intel Opts to Speak Softly on Antitrust Issues nytimes.com
Alan, since your post was a reasonable enough message, as opposed to the Donohoe/Dowd ad hominem school, I'll dedicate this excerp from yesterday's Times to you.
Yet antitrust experts also point to a straightforward explanation for Intel's ability to avoid the tougher treatment and criticism: In its public statements and in its internal procedures, Intel has for years taken a more cautious and painstaking approach to the antitrust issue than is evident at Microsoft.
Intel executives will not comment on the current Microsoft case --which took another unusual turn last week when, after resisting for weeks, Microsoft relented and said that to comply with a federal judge's order it would give PC makers the option of erasing the icon for its Internet Explorer browser from its Windows operating system. [ Nice quote for Donohoe there, eh?]
But one person close to Intel said the company's senior executives, including Andrew S. Grove, Intel's chairman, are concerned by Microsoft's handling of the case and the "potential political spillover" -- as the other partner in the so-called "Wintel duopoly," Intel could share in the criticism leveled at Microsoft.
"Intel would prefer that Microsoft were doing this in a lower-profile, less combative way," the person said.
. . .
Microsoft officials have also repeatedly characterized the Justice Department's antitrust division -- a staff loaded with graduates from the economics departments and law schools of the nation's elite universities -- as little more than the unwitting dupes of Microsoft's rivals.
"Microsoft has gratuitously made high-octane statements that may make their people feel good at the time," said Kevin Arquit, a partner at the law firm of Rogers & Wells in New York. "But in the end, those kind of tactics work against Microsoft."
Intel, Arquit notes, is taking a very different tack. "Intel is keeping its head much closer to the water and being more careful," said Arquit, a former director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, from 1982 to 1992, when both Intel and Microsoft were under investigation by the commission.
In legal circles, the Intel antitrust compliance effort is regarded as a model program. The company had antitrust training before, but the current program had its origins in 1987 when Grove summoned Dunlop, the general counsel, into his office.
Dunlop said Grove viewed the company's rising market share and fast-growing work force as greatly increasing the risk of antitrust problems for Intel. Increased market power would attract closer scrutiny from Washington and more employees increased the chances that someone would violate antitrust laws, even if unintentionally.
"Andy said he wanted to turn the antitrust program into a world-class effort just as we have with microprocessor design training," Dunlop said.
Only the paranoid survive, but you got to have a little guile about it too. If you act like a raving lunatic paranoid, you might end up in the nuthouse.
Unless their fortunes slide unexpectedly, Microsoft and Intel can expect to be under the watchful eye of Washington for some time.
"Microsoft and Intel are both 800-pound gorillas, both so critical to the economy, that it should not surprise either of these companies that they are under antitrust scrutiny," said Robert Litan, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, and a former chief economist in the Justice Department's antitrust division.
But, maybe Citizen Gates can get Charles "Rick" Rule back in his proper position at Justice in the next administration, right? That wouldn't be politics, that would just be a correct interpretation of the law. Meanwhile, I read elsewhere that Randolph, the Bush appointee in the 3 judge appeal panel, was a protege of Bork. No politics there either, right? I don't know about Objectivists, but I'm sure Libertarians everywhere have to love Bork, with his great respect for individual rights.
Cheers, Dan. |
