Intel has admitted to some major gaffes in handling documents in an antitrust suit filed by Advanced Micro Devices, which is moving toward a trial next March. Now the chip giant says the shoe is on AMD’s foot.
Intel this week filed a motion seeking sanctions against AMD, alleging that its smaller rival failed to adequately retain and produce documents in the case and tried to hide its lapses.
by William M. Bulkeley and Keith J. Winstein, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal
A mainframe computer may seem as out-of-date as a typewriter in the age of Google and iPhones. But the half-century-old business is still crucial and lucrative enough to be drawing scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators.
International Business Machines Corp. is now almost alone in the market for mainframes: high-end computers that run everything from Amtrak’s reservation system to benefits payments for the Social Security Administration.
by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback made his case against the Google Books settlement Tuesday, arguing that the settlement is illegal but could be remedied if the Justice Department insists that Google license the books it scanned to competitors.
“I think you are going to see a repeat of Microsoft.” Christine Varney’s blunt assessment sent a buzz through the audience at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Varney, a partner at Hogan & Hartson and one of the country’s foremost experts in online law, was speaking at the ninth annual conference of the American Antitrust Institute, a gathering of top monopoly attorneys and economists.
Silicon Valley was abuzz Wednesday with news that the Justice Department had begun an antitrust investigation into the hiring practices of some of the best-known companies in the technology and biotech industries, including Google, Apple, Yahoo and Genentech.
A couple of weeks ago, the new Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, Christine Varney, publicly repudiated a controversial report issued in the fall of 2008 by the Bush Justice Department.
Many lessons have been drawn from the U.S. government’s antitrust assault on Microsoft in the late 1990s. Intel’s new scrape with the European Union is likely to spark memories of one of the simplest: don’t put it in writing.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As investors and analysts digest this morning’s Oracle-Sun news, some are wondering what will happen to Sun-owned MySQL, and whether combining the Oracle and MySQL database businesses would represent an antitrust concern.
The planned advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo, which was devised during Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo, is headed for a federal antitrust challenge. And that could mean, according to one analyst, that Google could wind up walking away from the deal.
by Kevin Maney, Blogger, Tech Observer, Portfolio.com
Reports, rumors and innuendos are bouncing around the Web that Google may not want to cut an advertising deal with Yahoo after all. This before there is actually substantiation that Google and Yahoo are crafting an advertising deal, which was something of a rumor and innuendo in the first place, allegedly planted to let Microsoft know that Yahoo had options.
Can Microsoft really put together the concepts “interoperability” and “principles?” That’s the question to ask following Thursday’s announcement about Microsoft’s so-called new “interoperability principles.” For quick clarification: The principles aren’t really new–the European Union’s Competition Commission required the principles’ framework, in response to Microsoft’s March 2004 adverse antitrust ruling. The timing also is suspicious, given the potential public-relations bang Microsoft could get about a week before a key vote will determine whether or not ISO adopts OOXML (Open Office XML) as a standard.
After years of rumors, it finally happened. On Friday, Microsoft made its buyout offer for Yahoo. But while that was expected to happen, as both companies have had trouble catching online advertising juggernaut Google, what wasn’t so expected was that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would go all Murdoch on Yahoo with a hostile bid at a 62% premium over Yahoo’s stock price. But unlike Rupert Murdoch’s hostile bid for Dow Jones, Ballmer doesn’t have to contend with family ownership or strange stock structures.
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