The problem is; the fines usually accosiated with breaking them are just a tap on the wrist for those breaking them, if I was the judge and jury, I would make the fine so big, that the company will only be able to afford operational costs and salaries for 3 years or so, before churning profits for their coffers again, I will hurt you so bad, so bad, you would never even think of trying that crap again as long as you live.
en.wikipedia.org
The simplest solution for a company too large and powerful is to forcibly break it up.
People have forgotten that in the year 1776, when the USA was founded (or at least, we declared our independence), companies were
an act of congress. Each company had to be argued at Congress and proven before our representatives that the companies were worth creating. From the start of our country, the idea was that companies should be first-and-foremost, to the
benefit of Americans.
Today, we have a more Libertarian slant (closer to the 1870s period), where we let companies go free and do whatever they like. But politics changes from decade to decade. Eventually, the country will once again realize that we can enforce laws, breakups and enact changes with a mere stroke of the pen to improve ourselves and the place we live in. Antitrust issues are just that. FBI may initiate them, but in our political system, they need our moral support for lasting change. People are scared of changing today's society, to a detriment. But the powers are always there. They've just been forgotten.
Its not really about the law per se. We have plenty of laws ready to challenge and breakup monopolies. Its that our country is largely afraid to use those laws in today's politics.
The first step, politically speaking, is to get everyone to agree that the #1 purpose of US Companies should be to benefit Americans. If a company is no longer useful (or worse: they're actively harming innovation or hampering us), then we need to think about how to reorganize those troublesome companies. Maybe even the "meta" argument is to teach today's voters and today's population that companies can be harmful to us AND we actually have laws + regulations that can fix those problems (when applied correctly).
-----------
That being said: FBI hasn't filed a case yet. FBI is just gathering evidence. We don't know what NVidia has done to catch the FBI's attention. And we might never know.
It's all relative.
Back in the days of Netburst, PC builders would start looking at AMD chips. And then Intel would walk in and ask: how much business do you think you can get from AMD? About 10%. Ok, what if we gave you a 10% discount, so for every CPU you already get from us, you get the one you would get from AMD for free?
What Intel offered was just a discount, which isn't usually even frowned upon. It's all legalese from there.
Bug knows what's up, but I think bug's post needs a bit more context.
This "discount move", bug described was determined to be an antitrust issue. Intel was then forbidden from doing that again.
