News AMD/ATI merger gets government approval

[Da Dego]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09...ment_approval/

[yahooadam]

i thought this had been finalised ?

guess not then ..... anyway, their 2 different markets joining together, I'm not sure why they would have been blocked

[specofdust]

Governments can often say no to mergers of companies this large yahooadam, they have to agree to the things in order to make sure that monopolies don't end up in place(in theory, MS not being broken up proves it doesn't always work).

[Rekarp]

Originally Posted by specofdust

Governments can often say no to mergers of companies this large yahooadam, they have to agree to the things in order to make sure that monopolies don't end up in place(in theory, MS not being broken up proves it doesn't always work).

Whats wrong with MS? Its not like they own all the manufacturing processes in making computers, they just make the most perfered OS in the world. Now a monopoly would occur if lets say Intel and AMD merged into one company or Nvidia and ATi merged. Its not like you "have" to use Windows XP. Theres OSx and linux options. So please dont label Microsoft as a monopoly.

[glnsize]

Originally Posted by specofdust

Governments can often say no to mergers of companies this large yahooadam, they have to agree to the things in order to make sure that monopolies don't end up in place(in theory, MS not being broken up proves it doesn't always work).

If monopoly laws weren't in effect. Sun, Apple, and AMD would have been put to rest long ago. That’s the funny part to me... Apple isn't Microsoft’s competition. Apples existence enables Microsoft’s dominance.

Nowhere in the law does it say one company can't have total dominance over a market. All it says is there must be competition. Intel and NVIDIA are still out there so there is no reason to block the merger...

[Tyinsar]

[OT]

Originally Posted by Rekarp

Whats wrong with MS? Its not like they own all the manufacturing processes in making computers, they just make the most perfered OS in the world. Now a monopoly would occur if lets say Intel and AMD merged into one company or Nvidia and ATi merged. Its not like you "have" to use Windows XP. Theres OSx and linux options. So please dont label Microsoft as a monopoly.

No, but for quite a while they made it pretty much impossible to buy any other OS on a complete computer from any major manufacture. They effectively squashed other OS's through monopolistic practices.
[/OT]

I'm actually looking forward to see what AMD does with ATI.

[Rich_13]

Originally Posted by glnsize

If monopoly laws weren't in effect. Sun, Apple, and AMD would have been put to rest long ago. That’s the funny part to me... Apple isn't Microsoft’s competition. Apples existence enables Microsoft’s dominance.

Nowhere in the law does it say one company can't have total dominance over a market. All it says is there must be competition. Intel and NVIDIA are still out there so there is no reason to block the merger...

lets not forget the smaller players like via in these markets (xgi are still around right?) etc. ..

[speedfreek]

Originally Posted by Rich_13

lets not forget the smaller players like via in these markets (xgi are still around right?) etc. ..

Actually Via makes what intel makes, just not as much (chipsets, cpus, and gfx). I dont quite understand why AMD bought ATI but it could have something to do with the core 2 performance and they want to diversify.

[Marquee]

As a Canadian I am happy to give ATi to the US for about $10CD which is about $8 US. I hope AMD does something to ATi to fix the issues that people have with customer serives. I hope to see some great motherboard that come out that enable AMD CPU's and ATi mother boards and GPU's to work better together.

[EQC]

Originally Posted by Marquee

I hope AMD does something to ATi to fix the issues that people have with customer serives.

Man...I heard that. I had a horrible many-month long experience with the only ATI product I've ever bought. Their customer service reps were actually reasonable...although they never could solve my problem (which many others had). The real problem was that they started selling the hardware before the software was ready, the software update process took about 2 hours, and many of their subsequent software revisions added new problems while failing to reduce the old ones.



On a different note, the discussion on "monopolies" needs to remember that there are 2 basic types of monopolies: vertical, and horizontal. A horizontal monopoly is where one company owns every manufacturer of one product (ie: one company is responsible for every CPU made). A vertical monopoly is where one company owns every step of producing something (ie: perhaps if Intel owned silicon mines, silicon refineries, chip fabs, retail outlets, etc...they might be considered a vertical monopoly). I'm not really sure if vertical monopolies are frowned upon in the same way as horizontal ones since they're less of a threat to competition...but it's not much of a stretch to say a company (AMD/ATI) that produces CPU's, GPU's, chipsets, etc is approaching vertical monopoly strength.