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To: fastpathguru who wrote (241433)	9/29/2007 1:46:42 AM
From: wbmw	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 275872

Re: Just because even they can't cram EVERY piece of crap down the market's throat doesn't mean they aren't a harmful monopoly. No, but so far I haven't heard one good reason why Intel is a harmful monopoly. They've done many things that have been beneficial to the consumer and to the industry, they've consistently competed in a market with increasingly better performance and lower prices, and they've bowed out of every major initiative that the industry didn't like. In fact, the only major complaint comes from AMD investors, because Intel competes very well, while AMD posts losses. Oh yeah, and the myth that if AMD ever went away, Intel would go back to selling Pentium 4 chips for $1000 a piece. Right. Re: Suuuuuure. Your pitch is now that Intel is powerless to influence "the industry?" They can't push standards? I thought that that's been your very thesis for your last few posts... That what the market needs is a good monopoly to show them what direction to march in, what standards to follow, because the rabble sure aren't capable of doing so... You are obviously missing the point. Large companies have the weight to throw around to create large ecosystems that benefit consumers. But the sign of a good monopoly is when a company can bow out when they introduce a standard that nobody wants - like Dan's example of Rambus. A harmful monopoly would have ensured that Rambus remained the only viable choice, and would have used market dominance to destroy any alternatives. But in the case of Intel, consumers flocked to 3rd party boards that used SDR and DDR memories, while Intel's sales of i850 boards plummeted. That's not the sign of a harmful monopoly. It's the sign of healthy competition. On the other hand, Intel has introduced a number of standards that the market actually wanted, and in order to make sure they weren't in a dominate position, Intel created special interest groups, like PCI-SIG, in order to push the standards that they created. They also threw billions of dollars at WiFi, not because they made money on WiFi and they were out to destroy competitive wireless standards, but because they made money on laptop chips, and WiFi made consumers more interested in laptops. That's the sign of a good monopoly.

To: fastpathguru who wrote (241433)	9/29/2007 9:28:14 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Re: Just because even they can't cram EVERY piece of crap down the market's throat doesn't mean they aren't a harmful monopoly I was being sarcastic - sorry it didn't come through. That was my feeble attempt to reinforce your point. I think that Rambus is a perfect example of how an absolutely horrible, basically unworkable "standard" nearly came into being purely because Intel has such overwhelming monopoly power. Rambus was more expensive, lower performing, caused data corruption in a handful of obscure corner cases, yet it would have been the "standard" if not for AMD's championing of DDR. Regards, Dan