Tags : oracel, Sun
Oracle-Sun Merger Catches Eyes Of EU Competition Czar
Brussels, Belgium (AHN) – The proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle became the subject of an in-depth inquiry Thursday by the European Union’s competition commissioner, who cited the implications for the database market.
“The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world’s leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open source database company,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.
Kroes said that the Commission was worried about the potential for reduced choice if the merger went through. The investigation will try to determine, among other things, what Oracle’s incentive will be to continue development of the open-source database.
The Commission also wants to know if “the open source nature of Sun’s MySQL might not eliminate fully the potential for anti-competitive effects,” Kroes said.
The commission has 90 days to complete its investigation, which officials described as routine.
The Oracle-Sun Microsystems merger has already been approved in the U.S.
Oracle had a 50 percent share of the European market, which includes the Middle East, in 2008, according to data by Gartner Inc. MySQL had 0.04 percent of database sales.
According to the Commission, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft control about 85 percent of the market in terms of revenue.
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