Intel settles US fair trade complaint

In today's podcast: Intel settles US fair trade complaint; Saudia Arabia hops on Blackberry-banned wagon; and Facebook growth forces doubling of data center plans.

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Intel and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have settled a complaint the FTC filed in December and the terms of the settlement order will be disclosed on Wednesday. The complaint said that the company had abused its dominance in the chip market and carried out a "systemic campaign" of threats and rewards to coerce computer makers like IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard into using fewer chips from rivals Advanced Micro Devices and Via Technologies. According to the FTC, the tactics were designed to "put the brakes on superior competitive products" that threatened Intel's monopoly. The complaint mentioned AMD's Opteron server processors, released in 2003, as an example. Intel's conduct, carried out over the past decade, resulted in higher prices and less choice for consumers, the FTC said.

Saudi Arabia has joined the list of governments frustrated with their inability to monitor all communications made via Research in Motion's BlackBerry service; It is suspending it as of Friday. The suspension will cover all services, including e-mail and instant messaging. The United Arab Emirates and India are also tussling with Blackberries. They want Canada-based Research in Motion to make it easy for their governments to intercept and examine the contents of mobile communications sent and received over the Blackberry service. Meanwhile, the company says that the system is not architected in such a way that accommodates government demands for censorship and surveillance. The Blackberry service is popular with enterprise customers precisely because its security architecture puts encryption keys only in the hands of those customers.

In the latest sign of Facebook’s explosive growth, the social networking giant has has decided to more than double the size of its planned data center in Oregon before the first part of the project is even built. Facebook said in January that it was building its first wholly owned data center. Originally planned as a 147,000-square-foot facility that's due for completion early next year, the facility will now encompass another 160,000 square feet of data center space on the same site. That second phase should be finished by early 2012. Facebook was approaching 400 million users when it announced the data center. Last month it crossed the 500 million mark.

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Elizabeth Heichler in Boston. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.