You know you’re playing an extreme version of hardball when you’ve scared off Amazon. As we reported today, Broadcom has so alienated Amazon with its unfriendly tactics that the cloud computing giant is working on its own networking switch chip. Amazon’s plan is to no longer do business with Broadcom. If this isn’t a sign Broadcom has gone too far, what is?

Broadcom has long been in regulators’ crosshairs over similar issues. Last fall it reached a settlement with the European Union where it promised to stop requiring customers to buy exclusively from Broadcom if they wanted to buy from it at all. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Broadcom over a broader range of issues, including whether its recent spate of acquisitions was designed to give it more ability to raise prices, according to an article in Capitol Forum in December.