Does The Public Care About Microprocessor Anti-Trust Trials?
from the who-are-you-trying-to-convince? dept
Years back, Intel did something fairly amazing: it working out a way to brand a boring microprocessor so that many consumers actually cared enough to know if Intel was “inside.” Normally, average consumer couldn’t care any less about the specific technology included in the computers they buy. The successful marketing campaign is part of why Intel was so successful for many years. It looks like AMD is trying a different spin on the same idea. Following their plans to sue Intel for anti-trust violations, they took their side of the anti-trust story to the public, taking out large ads in a number of newspapers. With the inclusion of Roll Call, it’s pretty clear they’re hoping to influence law-makers and policy-makers, but some of the other placements suggest that they really are trying to convince consumers of the merits of their case. There’s just one problem. Consumers really don’t care about anti-trust trials concerning a component on their computer. It was an amazing enough feat to convince them to care about the brand of what was inside in the first place. For AMD to then try to get them to care about whether or not certain practices around those chips violate anti-trust rules, seems like a waste of time. Wouldn’t they be better off focusing on convincing customers that AMD’s chips are better, and getting end-users to drive demand that way?
Comments on “Does The Public Care About Microprocessor Anti-Trust Trials?”
They can promote their processors until they're bl
It won’t change the fact that Intel has probably bullied mfr’s into using Intel only. Pretty much the same way Microsoft did when PC mfr’s wanted to include Netscape back in the 90’s.
AMD’s product is clearly better now. How come the major PC makers still use Intel only?
Re: They can promote their processors until they'r
What’s weird, though, is that AMD doesn’t really seem to be saying that Intel is bullying companies, but rather incentivizing them with money. That seems like smart business — not bullying or anti-trust.
If AMD can get more end user demand built up — and clearly, the geekier community is increasingly recognizing how good AMD’s chips are — then computer makers won’t be able to avoid offering up AMD.
Anyway, the point of this article, though, wasn’t about the merits of the case, but to wonder why AMD would take the case to the public — who probably don’t care.
CPU antitrust
That the public doesn’t care is perhaps a sign that something is really wrong here. The same thing happens with Microsoft. It doesn’t matter that Windows is a piece of garbage, most people don’t care. Microsoft already took over with creepy practices.
People should care very deeply about anti-competitive practices in hardware. I had, and got rid of, a Toshiba laptop in the past. A so-called “BIOS-less” system, where you could only access BIOS things with Windows. This is just plain bad.
And let’s just not even get started on the Trusted Computing nightmare that looms in our near future.
mm, how does that work? Like convincing people that OSX or Linux is better? Tell me another good one, like success in the IT field isn’t related to the boss ass-kiss factor.
In any case, I see this as a whistleblower maneuver, A good thing. Now if we could just get AMD to quit the TCPA cartel…