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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (82091)	12/5/1999 2:21:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573689

Re: Intel's offer of price reductions to Gateway...Is Coke extorting McDonalds? Hi Elmer, I doubt any court would be concerned that Intel offered financial incentives to Gateway to persuade them to stop doing business with AMD, although your point that Coke has less than 2/3 of the market is well taken. The other issue is that McDonalds hasn't invested millions of dollars in cups and cup designs that work only with Coke and not with Pepsi. What would be of concern would be if Intel threatened to deprive Gateway of materials it needed to continue as a profitable business. Nonetheless, I doubt that the Gateway story, at least what we've heard of it so far, is much of a problem. What is potentially a problem for Intel are the hints that have come from Taiwan regarding pressure put on motherboard and chipset makers. What makes this area particularly interesting is that wiretaps and video surveillance of conversations that were generated outside of the US should be admissible in court in the US, since domestic wiretapping laws wouldn't apply - if anyone went beyond nudge-nudge, wink-wink, it could be a real problem for Intel. And yes, in such a case, it would be quite possible for some Intel executives to spend a little time in the slammer. Regards, Dan PS - I don't expect this to happen as long as Intel continues to demonstrate that it is an order of magnitude brighter than Microsoft when it comes to pushing the limits of the law. Intel will probably continue to not push quite hard enough to make it worthwhile for any civil or criminal actions to be initiated. They do seem to have gone right up to edge a few times recently, they must be pretty worried about the lag between Coppermine volume and Athlon volume. It seems to have made them somewhat desperate to delay Athlon's progress even though the corporation has had to incur some real risks doing so.