[nitrogen]

I don't understand how this merger substantially lessens competition.

Step 1: acquire ARM

Step 2: make life more difficult for other ARM license holders and/or easier for NVidia

Step 3: be the only viable supplier of ARM chips

I'm not seeing how this scenario warrants more scrutiny than "normal".

Speculating: maybe the old "normal" was too low, this was just the easiest first move, and other more difficult antitrust moves are in the pipeline.

[dcow]

Intel could do the exact same thing to any X86 vendor today, couldn't it? And AMD to X86_64 vendors, no? I'm not saying your logic is wrong, but this problem seems more pervasive than Nvidia and ARM. In reality if we stop this merger what we're saying is that it's a problem for any company to own IP that they license to competitors while at the same time producing and selling an in-house product that leverages the same IP. I'm not ignoring the conflicting interest here, but we've never said "a company can't be vertically integrated and also license technology to competitors". Maybe times are a changing, but if this becomes the new norm the only thing it seems to protect are incumbents in the space who are already vertically integrated...

[Dylan16807]

> Intel could do the exact same thing to any X86 vendor today, couldn't it? And AMD to X86_64 vendors, no?

They already have killed off any effective competition, and that's a bad thing. If x86 was more diverse and was moving toward the current set of two, blocking it would also be good.

At least the important parts are falling out of patent...

> In reality if we stop this merger what we're saying is that it's a problem for any company to own IP that they license to competitors while at the same time producing and selling an in-house product that leverages the same IP.

Well it is. How much of a problem depends on how much competition the different parts of the market have.

[ScottBurson]

I think there's a difference between a company licensing IP it has developed itself vs. acquiring another company's IP that is already being used by competitors. Not saying the latter is never allowable, but it weighs against allowing the acquisition.

Still, you raise a good point. Maybe along with blocking more mergers, we should be looking at breaking some companies up.