Western Digital's Hitachi Storage Takeover Approved With Restrictions 156
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Unknown Lamer
from the trade-commission-regulating-trade-for-once dept.
from the trade-commission-regulating-trade-for-once dept.
angry tapir writes "Western Digital's plan to buy Hitachi Global Storage has run into U.S. FTC resistance: The U.S. FTC will require Western Digital to sell off assets used to manufacture desktop hard drives to a competitor as a condition of its U.S.$4.5 billion acquisition of rival Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the agency has announced."
It looks like Toshiba is the competitor receiving the manufacturing assets.
More from the FTC: "Under the proposed settlement order, Toshiba will receive all of the productive assets needed to replicate Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' position in the desktop hard disk drive market. In addition, the settlement order requires Western Digital to provide Toshiba with access to its employees involved in research and development and the production of desktop hard disk drives, and also requires Western Digital to license all intellectual property needed to make and supply desktop hard disk drives to Toshiba. The settlement order also requires Western Digital to be available to supply Toshiba with certain components Toshiba will need to run the desktop hard disk drive business it acquires, and to contract manufacture hard disk drives for Toshiba until Toshiba is able to manufacture them on its own. The FTC also has appointed a monitor to oversee the sale of the assets to Toshiba and to keep the Commission informed about the status of the required divestiture."
Somehow this makes the sale fair? (Score:4, Interesting)
So Western Digital can buy Hitachi... but give everything that might possibly have been a competitive advantage away to Toshiba at a low cost?
Hitachi (IBM) Deathstars (Score:2, Interesting)
Worst drives I've ever owned.
Re:Somehow this makes the sale fair? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. And, if it had been Hitachi buying Western Digital there would have been no strings attached, because the U.S. likes to shoot itself in it's own foot but will gladly help outsource whatever is left and destroy our economy at home. Sad tragedy...
WD is SHIT! (Score:4, Interesting)
Hitachi (formerly IBM) branded drives were the most reliable out of them all. And unlike Hitachi, Western Digital crippled their SATA drives with TLER settings to prevent proper RAID operation. The drives would drop out after 30 days of continuous use in some instances. So, they forced users to use either the Enterprise or RAID edition drives. It pisses me off that it's not Hitachi buying out WD.
And yes, WD MyBook drives are absolute shit too. Don't use them for backups. They last about year or so and that's it.
What goes around, comes around! (Score:3, Interesting)