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Oracle wins over EC on Sun acquisition

By Reuters

Posted on 21 Jan 2010 at 11:32

Oracle has won unconditional EU regulatory approval for its $7 billion acquisition of computer maker Sun Microsystems.

"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned," says EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

"Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products," she adds.

Oracle received the green light from the US Department of Justice in August last year, but has been made to sweat by the EU body, which expressed concerns that the deal could dent competition in the database market.

The EC launched an investigation in September, citing concerns about the competition impact on Sun's MySQL database. The investigation has put Oracle months behind its original plan for closing the deal.

It has also allowed rivals including IBM and HP time to poach hardware customers from Sun, using the uncertain future of the company as leverage.

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User comments

Good. Java should have a secure future now. The effect on MySQL will be benign, IMHO.

By c6ten on 21 Jan 2010

@c6ten

Oh you would say that. I sincerely hope that MySQL doesn't get screwed by Oracle. It will be a very very very bad day for this open source database that has started taking over the planet.

By treadmill on 21 Jan 2010

Why should it. It's open source. Oracle can't kill it if they wanted to, and there's no reason to believe they do. It hardly competes with Oracle DB.

By c6ten on 21 Jan 2010

"Oracle can't kill it if they wanted to"
But if they don't do anything with it, it'll die from neglect. For it to then live again, it'll need the formation of a group to take it on, plus marketing it under a new name (because if Oracle do deliberately let it die, they won't let the name go). Being open-source is no guarantee of anything - just look at the succession of Composer, NVu, Kompozer - the last 2 being 1 man bands, so far as I know.

And even if Oracle don't deliberately want to kill it - how do they market it? They have a database management system to market already, so how do they present mySQL to the world? Not simple with the best will in the world...

By AdrianB on 21 Jan 2010

I think Oracle would actually like to justify there investment by trying to make a profit out of it. I mean why spend $1bn (the amount Sun originally paid to acquire MySQL) then do what you're saying and just 'chuck it in the bin'. I mean not even greedy capitalists are stupid.

By c6ten on 21 Jan 2010

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