From NYTimes: Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.
These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel had struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators said, pressured them into picking the company’s microprocessors — which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers — instead of competing products from A.M.D. “Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”
What is competition law? This is an important paragraph in the Wikipedia article: When firms hold large market shares, consumers risk paying higher prices and getting lower quality products than compared to competitive markets. However, the existence of a very high market share does not always mean consumers are paying excessive prices since the threat of new entrants to the market can restrain a high-market-share firm's price increases. Competition law does not make merely having a monopoly illegal, but rather abusing the power that a monopoly may confer, for instance through exclusionary practices.
