Oracle has offered $7.4bn for Sun
EU still unsure of Oracle-Sun deal
/v3-uk/news/1974566/eu-unsure-oracle-sun-deal
22 Oct 2009, Dave Neal , V3
Oracle has failed to produce enough evidence to convince the European Union (EU) that its plans to acquire Sun Microsystems are not anti-competitive, according to reports.
The database firm has offered $7.4bn (£4.5bn) for Sun, a purchase that would turn Oracle into a giant hardware and software company.
The EU is concerned that such a deal could put Oracle in a position to dominate the server market, particularly with MySQL, and has said that Oracle has done little to assuage these fears.
A spokesman for EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said that she had " expressed disappointment that Oracle had failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or, alternatively, proposals for a remedy to the competition problems identified by the European Commission", according to the BBC.
Oracle will be keen to avoid any further delays, and will have to work hard to change EU minds.
Sun announced this week that delays to the deal had led to a decision to cut 3,000 staff over the next 12 months.
The EU has until 19 January to make a final ruling on the merger.
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Do you agree?
MySQL does *not* compete with Oracle
Anyone can download and use MySQL for free while Oracle charges 40k per CPU. It's like saying Rolls Royce is in the same market segment as the Mini Cooper!
Posted by Anon mysql user, 22 Oct 2009
Rolls and Mini
It's true that Rolls and Mini are not addressing the same market, but the issue is about customers expactations and innovation.
When Mini starts to offer heating seats, Rolls has to find innovative features to differentiate and justify the price difference. It's the same in the software industry. MySQL and other open source projects are a continuous stick to licensed software producers to innovate. And the EC will not allow Oracle to change this in the DB space!!
Posted by Fulvio, 23 Oct 2009