[KaoruAoiShiho]

Anyone think overaggressive monopoly laws can sometimes harm innovation? For example when Intel was way ahead of AMD by natural instinct it should've wanted to push ahead and "finish off" the company. But perhaps because it feared being labeled a monopoly it took the foot off the pedal and expanded elsewhere instead, harming x86 innovation. However, that's not to say monopolies are ok. I think regulators should do more to stymie their powers but it's difficult for sure.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Companies should not have a goal of destroying each other. That is exactly what monopoly law is designed to prevent. They should be concerned with effectively serving their customers. If Intel had stuck to that path, then they would not have been successfully sued for using monopoly tactics.

[markdown]

I don't think you've thought that through.

How would Intel destroying AMD be good for innovation?

Once AMD was gone, they'd have no more incentive to innovate at all.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

AMD being destroyed would be bad for innovation in the long term but in the medium term it could create a pattern where Intel only stays barely ahead because going *too far ahead is actually detrimental. Regulations should perhaps be changed so that monopolies are incentivized to innovate and create good value instead of holding back. For a good while there browsers (IE6) were complete crap because MS feared regulations. You can think of the same thing happening to all MS windows software, from paint to windows movie maker. If MS were allowed to make good software for low cost the benefits to society could be pretty large.

However, because MS was close to a monopoly everything they do was suspect. On the other hand modern day apple seems to profit immensely from being NOT a monopoly. By not having a monopoly in a single area they're allowed to vertically expand as much as they want. Imagine if apple weren't allowed to offer siri, or icloud, or facetime, or imessages? The vertical expansion turns out to be more profitable than horizontal domination while at the same time being as abusive as MS ever was.

[pjmlp]

With AMD gone we would all have been using some variation of Itanium by now, instead we got stuck with x86 because AMD found a workaround for 64 bit migration.