AMD, Intel & nVidia . (Ethical Argument)

[TechFan@ic]

This is probably going to be a fairly controversial topic because what I want to discuss isn't product quality, performance, price or any other metric we usually use to evaluate a product of a company.

What I want to discuss pertains to the companies themselves & how they like to do business.

I've recently come to a realization that I personally wouldn't care very much about a specific product even if it was clearly superior, if I don't appreciate what the company that's selling it is doing, or if I don't agree with how it is conducting its business.

I'm not strictly speaking of the 3 specific companies that I've mentioned in the title either, I'm speaking more in terms of a broader spectrum, if I don't like a specific company I won't buy their product period, I'm pretty sure there are people who would agree with me & people who would not.

But because this is a tech forum, I thought I should keep the argument to the three largest players in the game so to speak.

An article I've read recently sparked my interest in this matter, it's about a book a former AMD CEO has written & will publish soon.

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blo...o-be-expo.html

The book is centered around some alleged and some proven "dirty tricks" that Intel has used & might even still be using to retain it's massive 80% market share in the desktop & server space.

I'm not going into this with too much depth, most of you probably know Intel and its "corporate" ways so to speak.

What I'm interested to know now though, is whether people care about how a company does business and whether it affects their decision to buy a product from that company.

I'm also interested in hearing similar stories with ATi & nVidia , & whether one or the other used dirty tactics at one point before.

Now I'll just leave you with a quote, it was a great maxim given as a printout for each AMD worker who started a job at AMD in Dresden until Jerry Sanders retirement.

Jerry Sanders is one of the founders of AMD .

"people first, products and profit will follow!"

[IdeaStormer]

Welcome to the Open Market. If you read up on history this has happened to every market that exists if not happening now, well actually its happening all the time.

Once you get into the politics of how they run their companies I doubt you would buy from any of them, that is why we come up with other metrics, like price/performance/quality/support. If you include any personal items of the companies it would get pretty messy and crazy right away.

They all pull dirty tricks, from the company top exec's, marketing, sales, down to the resellers. In business there are no rules, and if you get caught well then its time to jump ship on to the next company.

[TechFan@ic]

Welcome to the Open Market. If you read up on history this has happened to every market that exists if not happening now' date=' well actually its happening all the time. Once you get into the politics of how they run their companies I doubt you would buy from any of them, that is why we come up with other metrics, like price/performance/quality/support. If you include any personal items of the companies it would get pretty messy and crazy right away. They all pull dirty tricks, from the company top exec's, marketing, sales, down to the resellers. In business there are no rules, and if you get caught well then its time to jump ship on to the next company.[/quote']

Corporate warfare has existed for centuries, and it did with various extents and measures but when it comes down to it, some companies &/or execs conduct business in ways far less ethical than others.

And I personally would refuse to do business with such companies & I think others should too, especially when more ethical companies present equally good products/services .

A family farm for example is just incomparable to a large agricultural corporation (that shall remain nameless) which sells inhumane biochemical weapons to armies.

[Puppet]

Everyone is jumping on the technology sector these days and the market is filthy, and its only going to get worse. I can't help but think of poker when it comes to the companies you mentioned. AMD is definitely spooked, with all the rumors that they are holding back their next gen graphics cards until the end of the year, I can't help but think that they will be playing their last hand soon, let's hope its a good one. Even Nvidia seems a little frantic trying to expand into new markets with things like the ironically named "project shield", but they still have a great deal of stability in areas such as mobile processing. Intel is obviously the chip leader and wouldn't be surprised at all if I saw them merging with Nvidia in the near future.

This is just personal computing though and none of those companies come anywhere close to the big players who have made their money in other sub sectors. Samsung could literally buy all three of the mentioned companies and still have a little changed left over, obviously I couldn't see a deal like that taking place but in terms of market share they are bigger than the three put together.

Many other companies go under the radar too, such as Fujitsu, who invest heavily in the automotive electronics industry. Then there's Foxconn, who'll pretty much have a go at anything and to quote wikipedia (shivers) "the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer measured by revenues", this can be backed up by information provided on their own site though.

The company that scares me the most is Google, they have nowhere near the amount of money that some of the above mentioned companies have, this is more than likely due to the amount they reinvest, but if things like Google Wallet take off I can see them dominating a lot more than the technology sector. They have so much potential its unreal and like I said quite scary.

I don't think anyone can truly predict what's going to happen down the line, but I get the feeling that there will be a lot less competition, with one or two companies dominating each sub sector, its already starting to look that way, and with the rising cost of basic resources I can't see it playing out too well for us, the consumer.

[TechFan@ic]

Everyone is jumping on the technology sector these days and the market is filthy' date=' and its only going to get worse. I can't help but think of poker when it comes to the companies you mentioned. AMD is definitely spooked, with all the rumors that they are holding back their next gen graphics cards until the end of the year, I can't help but think that they will be playing their last hand soon, let's hope its a good one. Even Nvidia seems a little frantic trying to expand into new markets with things like the ironically named "project shield", but they still have a great deal of stability in areas such as mobile processing. Intel is obviously the chip leader and wouldn't be surprised at all if I saw them merging with Nvidia in the near future. This is just personal computing though and none of those companies come anywhere close to the big players who have made their money in other sub sectors. Samsung could literally buy all three of the mentioned companies and still have a little changed left over, obviously I couldn't see a deal like that taking place but in terms of market share they are bigger than the three put together. Many other companies go under the radar too, such as Fujitsu, who invest heavily in the automotive electronics industry. Then there's Foxconn, who'll pretty much have a go at anything and to quote wikipedia (shivers) "the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer measured by revenues", this can be backed up by information provided on their own site though. The company that scares me the most is Google, they have nowhere near the amount of money that some of the above mentioned companies have, this is more than likely due to the amount they reinvest, but if things like Google Wallet take off I can see them dominating a lot more than the technology sector. They have so much potential its unreal and like I said quite scary. I don't think anyone can truly predict what's going to happen down the line, but I get the feeling that there will be a lot less competition, with one or two companies dominating each sub sector, its already starting to look that way, and with the rising cost of basic resources I can't see it playing out too well for us, the consumer. [/quote']

You raise so many good points, at least with AMD/Intel or AMD Graphics/nVidia we actually get to choose which product we want because all three companies offer competitive products, based on whatever metric we personally think is important or relevant.

But in some cases, like google, even if you hate the company's guts you have no choice but to use their product (e.g.search engine), just because everything else fails to compete so miserably.

[Puppet]

Everyone is jumping on the technology sector these days and the market is filthy' date=' and its only going to get worse. I can't help but think of poker when it comes to the companies you mentioned. AMD is definitely spooked, with all the rumors that they are holding back their next gen graphics cards until the end of the year, I can't help but think that they will be playing their last hand soon, let's hope its a good one. Even Nvidia seems a little frantic trying to expand into new markets with things like the ironically named "project shield", but they still have a great deal of stability in areas such as mobile processing. Intel is obviously the chip leader and wouldn't be surprised at all if I saw them merging with Nvidia in the near future. This is just personal computing though and none of those companies come anywhere close to the big players who have made their money in other sub sectors. Samsung could literally buy all three of the mentioned companies and still have a little changed left over, obviously I couldn't see a deal like that taking place but in terms of market share they are bigger than the three put together. Many other companies go under the radar too, such as Fujitsu, who invest heavily in the automotive electronics industry. Then there's Foxconn, who'll pretty much have a go at anything and to quote wikipedia (shivers) "the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer measured by revenues", this can be backed up by information provided on their own site though. The company that scares me the most is Google, they have nowhere near the amount of money that some of the above mentioned companies have, this is more than likely due to the amount they reinvest, but if things like Google Wallet take off I can see them dominating a lot more than the technology sector. They have so much potential its unreal and like I said quite scary. I don't think anyone can truly predict what's going to happen down the line, but I get the feeling that there will be a lot less competition, with one or two companies dominating each sub sector, its already starting to look that way, and with the rising cost of basic resources I can't see it playing out too well for us, the consumer. [/quote']

You raise so many good points, at least with AMD/Intel or AMD Graphics/nVidia we actually get to choose which product we want because all three companies offer competitive products, based on whatever metric we personally think is important or relevant.

But in some cases, like google, even if you hate the company's guts you have no choice but to use their product (e.g.search engine), just because everything else fails to compete so miserably.

That was exactly my point, competition is great, I did kind of side step the main topic as to which companies are behaving unethically as I do think that they are all as bad as each other. I would just hate to see the technology sector mimicking the retail sector with giants like Walmart (who own ASDA for people in the UK and Ireland) dominating the landscape. Unfortunately it looks like that's they way things are going. I don't think we can compare events like this historically either, the blame for the shift in marketing strategy rests solely with the technology we created, never before have we had the level of communication that we have now, and its definitely having a profound effect on how we conduct our lives, yet more Irony. I keep wanting to expand on your topic, just got too much too think about, we definitely live in revolutionary times.