With no evidence that Intel ever sold below its cost, AMD urged that the bigger firm was keeping its rival down through rebates that gave computer makers incentives to buy bigger shares of Intel's chips (which, inevitably, reduced its rival's sales).
The Google proposal is similar in its intent to an existing effort by the electric utility industry to offer computer makers financial incentives for designing more efficient power supplies for personal computers.
The system, he said, gives administrators, not computer technicians, an incentive to fudge the numbers.
His idea, ahead of its time, has become commonplace with the development of more sophisticated computers and corporate incentives to employees.
Dirk Bergemann, chairman of the Yale economics department, explained that economics was concerned with efficiency, prices and incentives, while computer science focused on algorithms and complexity.
Microsoft, which owns Web TV and has substantial investments in cable television, is reported to be offering incentives to computer makers to add television cards as standard equipment.
Nass told me that, for too long, the incentives in computer science have worked in reverse, noting that professors with brilliant students are often motivated to "keep them around forever, being paid virtually nothing".
Twenty states suing the Microsoft Corporation for antitrust violations have dropped an allegation that the software giant gives computer makers illegal financial incentives to install its Windows Office software instead of competing business applications.
The European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, found in 2009 that the company had offered rebates and incentives to computer makers to favor its products over those of a rival, Advanced Micro Devices.
The interventions were ambitious, involving pop-up computer menus, mailings, financial incentives and educational sessions.
