August 10th, 2009
EU ombudsman slaps antitrust regulators over Intel case
The European Union ombudsman reportedly criticized antitrust regulators over its evidence collection against Intel.
According to the Wall Street Journal, EU ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said that the European Commission, which fined Intel $1.45 billion in May for monopoly abuse, failed to record evidence from a Dell executive in August 2006. The Dell exec told investigators that the company viewed the performance of AMD as very poor. AMD has stumped against Intel’s business practices.
Why is that important? The EC argued that Intel used its monopoly power to squeeze AMD. If Dell chose Intel for technical reasons the EC case may have looked different. The EC said that manufacturers bought Intel chips because they feared losing rebates.
The Journal characterizes the failure to record the discussion as an embarrassment that may shed light on how the EC operates. In any case, U.S. tech giants—notably Intel and Microsoft—are trying to highlight that lack of clarity with the EC’s decision making process.
Ultimately, the Dell conversation wasn’t going to sway the ultimate outcome. The Journal reviewed a yet-to-be-published report from the EU ombudsman. When published, the report is likely to land here.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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