wbmw, rather thin skinned on this bribery stuff! Your example -
I bought some store-brand laundry detergent that was on sale. By your definition, this was clearly a bribe. If the supermarket hadn't offered me the "incentive", I might have bought one of the name brand competitors. So they must be offering me this money to stop using the competitor's products. Do you feel that's ok?
Discount laundry detergent is provided by discount manufacturers, maybe even offshore operations with lower costs. Anyone who enters the store is eligable for that discount, even repeat customers of the product.
Big difference between this and giving direct monetary incentives in the way of rebates to new customers who use a specific competitor's product, not available to other customers. By singling out these specific customers, yes HPQ is bribing them.
So your analogy fails. Totally.
However, let's go back to your thin skin on this topic: Not all bribery is illegal or even unethical. Bribery is only illegal if it is used to induce someone to break a law. Switching from Sun to HPQ is breaking no law, thus this form of bribery is not only legal - I think it is standard business practice.
I posted the original story. You missed the whole point: It was not to accuse HPQ of doing anything illegal or unethical. Rather, it was to highlight the precarious condition of Sun's market position right now, something that is a timely topic this week. It is germane to this board because of the recent rumors that Sun is going to commit resources to Opteron, which was confirmed by Sun for Java porting just Friday.
The point is Sun's declining market position, and how much residual benefit there is to AMD to work with Sun.
It is about Sun, not HPQ.
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