Antitrust Law Is Supposed To Protect Consumers, Not Competitors

AMD Finally Admits That ATI Acquisition Didn't Work Out As Planned

from the sorry-about-that dept

Thu, Dec 13th 2007 5:08pm — Mike Masnick

Over the summer, we wrote about problems with the merger between AMD and ATI, and folks in the comments insisted we were being too harsh and not giving the deal nearly enough time (along with some words bizarrely suggesting that we were "in bed" with Intel for suggesting any problems at AMD). Turns out that AMD actually agrees with our assessment that the merger has been something of a mess. The company has admitted that it's going to do a material write-down on the merger, though it hasn't yet figured out how much. Either way, it's yet another reminder that merging two big companies isn't a particularly easy process.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Companies: amd, ati

5 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

matt, 13 Dec 2007 @ 6:14pm

none
You've been waiting to get your "I told you so" in for a while now. (At least it sounds like it.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 13 Dec 2007 @ 8:37pm

Par for the course
Isn't it a fact that only a minority of mergers actually achieve anything? E.g. look at all the opposition to the HP-Compaq merger, and the objectors turned out to be right--the merger should not have gone ahead.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
tpjazm, 13 Dec 2007 @ 9:30pm

Would have preferred
I would have preferred that they left ATI alone anyway or let intel or even motorola buy it. While mergers with big companies are not always easy, many have been quite successful. It looked like there was a decline in the variety of cards that ATI used to put out. And it was no longer stomping the competition either.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rowan Jones, 14 Dec 2007 @ 1:33pm

Is it me or is Google one of the only ones who never fails at merging?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Clueby4, 14 Dec 2007 @ 2:25pm

ATI blows
WTF, Decline of ATI?

ATI has always sucked. Yea their hardware may be OK but their driver support is worthless.
[ link to this | view in thread ]