Oracle-Sun merger faces full monopoly probe The proposed $7.4bn dollar merger takeover of Sun by Oracle is facing a full competition investigation by the European Commission. Competition Commissioner 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes said: The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world's leading proprietary database company …
If they delay long enough, there might not be enough of Sun left to make a difference, so if Sun fail in the meantime, what price MySQL's survival.
Competitor FUD's already harming Sun's sales position, surly the market overall has to be more competative under a joint Sun Oracle offering, than without Sun at all. Is mySQL really that important on its own, Java yes but, it's not as if it's the only database out there. Handing the processor market to Intel/IBM must surly be a greater threat.
What price P series and AMD, if Sun dies.
Market Cap: Sep2000: 184B$ / Feb2008: 2,3B$
Products Net Revenue: 1998: 8.675M$ / 2009: 6.704M$
RISC Market (IDC - Rolling Quarter): 2000Q4: 11.749M$ / 2009Q1: 4.629M$
X64 - Share (IDC - Rolling Quarter): 2009Q1: 2,56%
FY2008 - Net Income: 403M$
FY2009 - Net Loss: 2.234M$
Unix Market Q209 (IDC): IBM: 41,4% share / Sun: 27,3% share
und so weiter....
agreed with previous comments... this investigation makes no sense, as there is nothing oracle can do to harm mysql, being open source, anyone can fork it if they want.
and anyways, mysql doesn´t really compete against oracle, ibm or microsoft, so it´s not anticompetitive monopoly... I wonder, will the commision justify the reason for they investigation or just leave to the public to imagine the lack of understanding they have on the matter...?
EU people have a soft spot for Novell and Red Hat, which would significantly suffer from the death of MySQL. They will ask Oracle to spin it off (so that Novell or RH can buy it), which Larry will gladly do (the project is fundamentally dead already, anyway).
Win-win for everyone, except Sun employees who have to endure another year of bureaucratic pain.
> Oh, so you prefer the American (and increasingly British) approach of allowing companies to screw everyone whichever way they please in the all consuming pursuit of 'growth'...?
The other choice is letting governments screw you over.
The difference is that paying Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM is voluntary... You can always use something else like Linux and MySQL even if it's less then desirable.
However if you don't pay your government and don't obey their rules (no matter how obnoxious or stupid) they send armed men to your house to take everything you own, take you away from your love ones, destroy your life, destroy your career, and throw in a cage if you resist them too strongly. And they couldn't give a shit less.
If a world were your a fucking moron if you trust your government I'll take the capitalist approach, thank you very much.
Well done "Steelie Neelie".
The EU seems to be the only organisation that take the job of preventing controlling monolpilies seriously.
When was the last time the DOJ blocked or even investigated a proposed merger?
I do think she picked the wrong battleground though. Oracles ownership of Java poses far more serious questions to the software industry as a whole especialy given Larry's history of "freinship" twoards the competition.
Think about it. IBM has an enormous suite of Java based software, Oracle has a few non core Java based products it picked up by accident during its buying spree. Why spend money developing a language tool that is mostly used by the competition?
The deal only $5.5B it is
STK to EMC for $1B (hey Sun spent $4B) they will sell
SPARC and Solaris to HP for $2B (Maintenance and EDS will surely justify at least $2B) they sell
Keep JAVA, Oracle can turn this into a $1B profit engine they will
MySQL (pretend to invest and force everyone to Oracle) reverse the $2B bleed from Oracle
....those pesky Euro trash know our game and don't appreciate Hara-kiri Larry
x86 product line...kill it and OEM from HP
It's simple milk it and kill it. Weblogic 47% price increase in 6 months and Virtual Iron...kill it in 30 days
....Let's face it the less companies the better....as long as they are all US based...fcuk the EU
Kebabbert
Agree with AC of 16:34. Regulators are suppossed to protect the market and consumers, Monopoly => No market => We get ripped of more than normal.
What we need are regulators with the nads to make sensible decisions quickley and not have things drag through the courts. Otherwise a legit investment by Oracle is rendered valueless by years of delay.
Having said all that, I can't believe Oracle bought the whole of Sun just to get its paws on MySQL. It just isn't that valable. If it is going to cause endless delay, it will get spun off or put at armslength like EMC-VMWare
The longer the EU spends looking into the database market, the more time Sun's rivals have to take server + hardware customers away. already Sun's market share has dropped to 10%.
So I see the following Irony, while trying to stop competition erosion in one market, The EU commission will contribute to competition erosion in another market.
Therefore, while I think the EU is right to investigate, I really hope that they do not spend too long doing it.
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