Robert Myers wrote:
Right. And you know, human beings being the way they are, that the
more loyal customers get the better volume discounts. Pricing can be
wildly arbitrary, and some customers are treated better than others.
Showing that a pricing strategy is predatory could be _very_ difficult
if the pricing strategy is structured properly, even though, in fact,
the strategy is aimed at rewarding loyalty at the expense of a
competitor. That's just the way it goes. Maybe Intel got careless
here. We'll have to see.

I don't think they got careless, I think that this time, their
time-honoured "how to build a monopoly without getting caught" technique
was not fast enough to prevent damage. I am guessing the raid on their
offices a year ago caught them off-guard, as it was meant to. Otherwise
they would've had time to take precautions. My guess is that the
European and/or American regulators are studying the Japanese technique
and getting ready to implement it themselves soon. Previous nice-guy
methods have yielded no evidence, this time it did.

As to the timelessness of what is deemed unacceptable, you're right at
least that monopolistic practices have a long history of legislation
and enforcement actions. What I was talking about was the
timelessness of people trying to get away with whatever they can get
away with. When something big happens, there is a flurry of activity,
and then people go back to seeing how far they can bend the rules. In
this case, the rule-bending is applied to using pricing in creative
ways that cross over from creative into illegal. No amount of
legislation or jawboning will ever stop such things.

There's nothing wrong with giving discounts based on volume. Based on
marketshare percentage is another matter. That sort of thing was
well-known to be illegal long before this case. They are not breaking
any new ground with Intel.

Sunday school teacher morality? Not even close, just enforcement of laws
that are already in place, specifically designed to stop this kind of
behaviour. A sociopathic behaviour so common that the laws have already
been in place for hundreds of years.


You don't think use of the loaded term "sociopathic" a little over the
top?

Psychopathic is little over the top, sociopathic is right in line.

Your comments seem uncharacteristically intense. No plausible action
against Intel will restore the fortunes of Sun.

Sun? What's Sun gotta do with it?

Yousuf Khan