eu

Report: Oracle not yielding to EU with Sun buy

Oracle is taking a hard line in dealing with European Union objections to its planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems, according to a Financial Times report Tuesday.

EU antitrust regulators are concerned that Oracle, which has a large business in proprietary software, won't be a good home for Sun's open-source MySQL database business. According to the report, Oracle is unyielding, offering no concessions to deal with the EU's concerns.

That stance could lead the regulators to issue a formal complaint objecting to the deal, and that move could occur within days, according unnamed sources in the story. Neither … Read more

BOL 1086: Beating a dead parse

Mozilla is upset about the browser ballot screen because it's alphabetical, left to right, by manufacturer. That means Apple gets the prime spot. We think that's parsing the screen too closely. So we decide to parse it even more! And we also reinvent battery technology and solve America's Internet problems. And can you believe it? We even do more. It's true.

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False Alarm: New iPhone 3GS Not Jailbreak-Proof http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/jailbreak-iphone

Wal-Mart Strafes … Read more

BOL 1079: Bing's still pooping his diapers

There's a little panic over the fact that Bing's market share dropped last month, but you have to remember, folks, Bing is young. Rafe puts it in perspective for us. Also, Kindle gets a price cut and goes worldwide, yo. That's big. What is also big is the keylogger network that's hijacking everyone's Web mail accounts. We can help you out with that, a bit.

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Another Kindle price cut…and it goes wireless internationally http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/06/financial/f210208D88.DTL&tsp=1 … Read more

Intel's Maloney: Our business is do or die

SAN FRANCISCO--Sean Maloney has some issues with the European Commission's antitrust case against his company, Intel, which he says must either "thrive or...die."

Last week, Maloney was promoted, along with David "Dadi" Perlmutter, to co-manage the reorganized--and massive--Intel Architecture Group. Maloney, an executive vice president, had been Intel's sales chief, and many observers see him as the odds-on favorite to be Intel's next chief executive. (Current CEO Paul Otellini, though, is likely to be in his post for some time to come.)

On Monday, the European Commission published a "nonconfidential version&… Read more

BOL 1068: You can't survive the stink!

AT&T lets you pay for its network holes, Chrysler puts auto manuals on DVD (and how are you supposed to use that in the car?), MySpace says its video portal is here now, USB 3.0 is here, Europe gives Google a green light to sell ads to the black marketers, and when you're dead on the Web, you're dead.

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AT&T breaks out its new 3G Microcell http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-10358045-85.html

3G MicroCells: Carriers … Read more

EU dives into Intel antitrust specifics

European antitrust regulators on Monday published internal e-mails that detail alleged antitrust behavior by Intel.

The European Commission Monday published a "non-confidential version" of its May 13 decision against Intel, which imposed a fine of $1.45 billion against the chip giant. That decision found that Intel broke EC Treaty antitrust rules (Article 82) by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for "x86" central processing units (CPUs).

The EC action was based on complaints from Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices.

Intel appealed the decision in July to a European court, … Read more

Intel contests EU on $1.45 billion fine

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Intel said Europe's top antitrust regulator failed "to meet the required standard of proof" when it fined the chipmaker $1.45 billion in May for anticompetitive behavior against Advanced Micro Devices. (The news comes as Apple named Intel's top lawyer Bruce Sewell as its general counsel.)

Intel noted that it would appeal, and the company recently laid out its case against the European Commission, the administrative wing of the European Union. In a nutshell, Intel argues that the EC:

• Failed to address evidence that AMD was … Read more

EU fiddles with MySQL while Sun burns

IBM and Hewlett-Packard could not have planned it any better.

The European Union has launched an in-depth investigation into Oracle's acquisition of Sun, potentially delaying the merger by several more months. In doing so, the EU is actually guaranteeing the demise of Sun's hardware business and gifting it to Sun's competitors by misunderstanding the deal's impact on open source, generally, and on MySQL, specifically.

If you haven't been paying attention, the delay on the merger due to U.S. and EU scrutiny has already resulted in two shockingly bad quarters from Sun. Many enterprise customers … Read more

Report: EU ombudsman criticizes Intel antitrust regulators

The European Union's ombudsman has criticized the antitrust regulator in a recent case against Intel, saying the regulator did not include evidence that was potentially exculpatory for the chipmaker, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

In May, Intel was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) for engaging in, according to the Commission, illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips based on the x86 architecture--the design that both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices use in their microprocessors.

"Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep … Read more