The European Commission decided that the 7.4-billion-dollar deal would not limit competition in Europe, officials in Brussels confirmed. US regulators have already approved it.<\/p>\n
“I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products,” EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.<\/p>\n
The commission is responsible for enforcing the EU’s strict laws on fair competition.<\/p>\n
The Brussels-based body has been investigating the proposed deal since September amidst concerns that the tie-up would give the planned company unfair control over the market for database software.<\/p>\n
That was because Sun in 2008 bought the world’s leading open-source database, MySQL. At that time, 85 per cent of the value of the world’s patented database market was in the hands of just three companies: Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.<\/p>\n
“The commission’s in-depth investigation … assessed whether the acquisition of the world’s leading open-source database, MySQL, by Oracle, the leading proprietary database vendor, would lead to a significant impediment of effective competition,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
The world’s database markets are “highly complex,” commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said, pointing out that the Brussels-based body had had to take into account both the markets for patented databases and open-source software in its decision.<\/p>\n
“On balance, all the elements have allowed the commission to conclude that the proposed merger will not impede competition in the database market in the European Economic Area,” which consists of the EU’s 27 member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, Todd said.<\/p>\n
The commission investigation did find that Oracle and MySQL were competitors in certain parts of the database market, raising fears that Oracle could be able to use the Sun merger to stifle competition by degrading or eliminating its rival, Todd said.<\/p>\n
But the probe concluded that another open-source database, PostgreSQL, “is considered by many database users to be a credible alternative to MySQL and could be expected to replace to some extent the competitive force currently exerted by MySQL,” the commission statement said.<\/p>\n
Pledges made by Oracle in December to current users of MySQL also played into the decision, with the commission concluding that they were “likely to allow third parties to continue to develop storage engines to be integrated with MySQL.”<\/p>\n
Oracle reacted to the decision with a brief statement on its website stressing that the commission’s decision was unconditional. The company now “expects unconditional approval from China and Russia and intends to close the transaction shortly,” the statement said.<\/p>\n