Oracle announced its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in the second half of April. Approved by shareholders in July and the Department of Justice in August, the EU was to be the last to sign off on the deal. However, the New York Times reports that the European Union's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, has said the deal could restrict competition in the already “highly concentrated” market for databases. Kroes today announced that the EU would be investigating the $7.4 billion deal.
Kroes said EU regulators must very carefully examine 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,” and went on to say that the investigation would examine whether customers of the two technology giants “would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover.”
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Read the full story on NYT.