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Nvidia offices raided by French competition authority (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Tibert@jlai.lu 143 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For people not knowing French, the Nvidia offices were not raided by heavily armed forces, with guns or whatever shooting.

"Perquisition" is just some cops/people coming and getting into your stuff or taking it for analysis. It's like a search in Nvidia's stuff/software/internal communications. It required a warrant given by a judge.

[-] thorcik@lemmy.world 103 points 1 year ago

Were they looking for the latest Linux drivers?

[-] magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 17 points 1 year ago

They're gonna need bigger guns then.

[-] qyron@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago

Still didn't found that piece of software

[-] Maalus@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago

You just described a raid...

[-] Tibert@jlai.lu 33 points 1 year ago

Some people may see it in some other way.

[-] Obi@sopuli.xyz 24 points 1 year ago

I think it's only in French that we associate raid with "all guns blazing" because we use the English word for cool action movies and the French one for boring news segments.

[-] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 year ago

it's not only in French. The word raid is quite connotated with an armed police raid, at least in non native speakers.

[-] Obi@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah that makes sense, probably for similar reasons right?

[-] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

not sure if it is only because of the movies. Even in the (world) news that you may read online it is much more often to read in the headlines of a violent armed police raid than service workers walking in to get the accounting books. So I guess it could also be that we've never seen or used this word in another context.

[-] Obi@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah the movies are just an example but indeed also in the news they'll use raid for when the armed police kicks the door down but perquisition for the boring ones. It's just what the words mean at this point, I guess back in the days it was "perquisition armée" (armed).

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

Maybe I'm too American raised in too much cop movies but a raid always comes off like body armor, armor piercing rounds of ammo, and flash bangs.

So I kinda need it explained like this.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

I think it mostly has that connotation but a bunch of feds showing up unexpectedly at an office to confiscate the books and computers before they can shred/delete data I'd still call a raid.

[-] Discoslugs@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Raids in america involve guns swat teams and often phantom warrants.

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 year ago

This is a problem with the US news in general because it uses the words "raid" and "execute search warrant on" as synonyms, when the former conjures up images of guys in body-armor with carbines and the latter a couple of cops and a bunch of specialized investigators. Like, various layers of US government have "raided" many of Trump's properties, and obviously it was the latter and not the former, it's not like Trump is gonna get the Breonna Taylor service.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Also, just to be absolutely clear, no neighbours were shot, or anything of the sort.

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago

But that's exactly what I assumed happened when reading the headline. Almost no native English speaker would assume it meant there was a shootout, or violence, or whatever. What you described is a typical "raid" executed against a company.

[-] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think for a lot of people the word raid has connotation with an armed police raid.

[-] rishado@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah a lot of idiots

[-] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

it's not about idiocity. It is because of for many non native speakers, this word has almost always been seen in that context.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Raided" is one of those bombastic clickbait headline words, like "slammed" or whatever. Unless it was actually a SWAT team busting down the door, what they should be saying is "executed a search warrant."

[-] rishado@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Isn't this the same as when they raid wall st offices? They don't take a swat team there afaik

[-] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, in the sense that those aren't deserving of the word "raid" either.

[-] Zima@kbin.social 83 points 1 year ago

Nvidia is pretty cut throat so the chances of them doing something wrong are high, but i'm not sure about the chances of finding evidence. they must have effective policies to defeat investigations, most big companies have them.

[-] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 61 points 1 year ago

Never underestimate the power of dumb procedures or the power of a government body who is certain they have a case.

Also remember, if it's not the act, it's usually the cover-up that gets ppl and companies on the hook.

Either way, this will be interesting.

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Let me dream. As someone who gets physically sick at the proprietary bullshit they shove down everyone's throat, customer or not, I would love to see them get any level of reprocussion however unlikely.

[-] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 50 points 1 year ago

linus-torvalds-nvidia.gif

[-] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 year ago

That was an IMAX experience

[-] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

This one weird trick to have all your gifs play exactly at the users current brain resolution.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 28 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Nvidia’s France offices were raided by the country’s competition authority this week, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

While the French agency doesn’t mention Nvidia by name, it confirms it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.

Sources tell the WSJ that French authorities specifically targeted Nvidia, which has seen demand for its chips skyrocket in recent months.

According to the WSJ, these types of raids occur early in the morning and have authorities “search a company’s premises, seize physical and digital materials and interview employees who arrive for work.” The French authority says it conducted the raid as part of its increased scrutiny on cloud technology, a topic the agency published a market study on in June.

A machine-translated version of the French agency’s press release says that dawn raids “do not pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law,” which is something “only a full investigation” can establish.

However, a raid could suggest that Nvidia’s reign in the chipmaking market isn’t going unnoticed by global governments.

The original article contains 257 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 31%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] bestnerd@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is weird. I’m all for anti-monopoly policies and court action, but this doesn’t make sense. Did Nvidia buy out smaller graphic companies? I may be ignorant but the only ones I know is AMD and ATI who merged, and now intel is making their own. I guess I don’t see how Nvidia is a monopoly

E: I made this comment and the rest in the chain after a night of drinking high octane beers for my birthday. I’m an idiot

[-] marius851000@lemmy.mariusdavid.fr 27 points 1 year ago

According to this article, NVidia has a 80% market share over Discrete GPUs. https://wccftech.com/nvidia-retained-80-discrete-gpu-market-share-amd-20-in-q2-2022-despite-gaming-revenue-losses/

That certainly count as monopoly (wonder how igpu goes, but I’ll guess it’s AMD’s who’s first).

Plus they tried to buy ARM recently.

And in France, it’s not monopoly that’s illegal, but company in such situation have more legal restriction due to their potential bad influence on the market compared to smaller companies.

[-] bestnerd@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I get that but how’s that a monopoly? They own the market share cause of the product and performance of said product. They aren’t buying companies to boost their share, they failed the arm deal, and from what I’ve read aren’t keeping companies tied to their product. Chatgpt, Microsoft and others can use other hardware. When we look at other monopoly cases it’s due to a forced take over if the market like Microsoft or the current Amazon case. I’m not defending Nvidia outright, but I’m not seeing how a company who produces a better product is at fault of a monopoly.

iOS has almost 60% market share, are they a monopoly cause people choose them as well?

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

A "better product" is only better by comparison to what the compitetion can do. It's bold to assume that they make better because they are fairly better when Nvidia have a history of doing shady or unhanded tactics in a totally healthy market with 3 competitors.

[-] AreaSIX@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

A monopoly is not necessarily connected to takeover of other companies to grow, so yes, they can be a monopoly. Also, iOS might have that market share in the US, but there are plenty of other markets dominated by Android. And lastly, 80% is a significantly larger market share than 60%, obviously.

[-] filister@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

When you actively undermine your competitors and abuse your market position.

And iOS is another player who is another great example why monopolies must be broken. They don't play nice, all their apps are not present on other OSs, don't forget the patent lawsuits at the beginning, the proprietary charging port, etc.

[-] NoMoreCocaine@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Does iOS actually have 60 percent market share, outside of the US?

[-] Anafabula@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Android is ahead in most other countries. 70% worldwide

[-] marius851000@lemmy.mariusdavid.fr 1 points 1 year ago

Well... Actually, monopoly is used in French for things that isn’t stricly speaking the sole actor (sorry). There are concurrence (mostly in the form of AMD and Intel in the PC DGPU market, and others in phone/mobile GPUs).

And for mobile operating system, they would count as a duopoly. Aside of IOS and Android, there isn’t much (thought Android is a bit special by the fact it can be reused by other vendors without the google-specific parts).

Actually, maybe the DGPU market could be seen as a triopoly (not much choice beside Intel, AMD and NVidia).

(and if we don’t use the term of monopoly, we can still say for sure they are the main provider of DGPU, which is very likely to cause competition issue)

[-] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

(wonder how igpu goes, but I’ll guess it’s AMD’s who’s first).

Intel, more likely.

[-] whitecapstromgard@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

EU competition law is about not having a single company dominate the market.

[-] nicman24@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i mean kinda ? but that was like 20 years ago

also this is not about games but compute and the probably the tried arm buyout

[-] bestnerd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

So where’s the monopoly? They make a better product and the arm deal isn’t sealed

[-] whitecapstromgard@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

The ARM deal is not happening.

Nvidia doesn't make a better product. They just lock in their ecosystem and prevent competition from breaking into the market. For example CUDA code can't be run by other cards.

[-] nicman24@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

they bought out melanox and ageia

this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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