Redwood City (ip-192.com): "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 revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products," said European antitrust commissioner Neelie Kroes.
The statement summarizes the position of the EU finally clearing the merger between Oracle and Sun Microsystems after Oracle addressed competition concerns about its acquisition of the open-source database MySQL, which Sun bought in 2008. Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said in September that the delay was creating uncertainty, causing Sun to lose $100 million a month as companies held off purchases or defected to competitors.
The European antitrust commission had threatened to block the deal because of concerns that Oracle might be able to eliminate MySQL. While the investigation concluded that the database market is highly concentrated with Oracle, Microsoft and IBM with a combined market share of 85 percent, it said that open source alternatives such as PostgreSQL exist. The commission accepted Oracle's public promise to continue the MySQL database software development.
Oracle expects unconditional approval from China and Russia and intends to close the transaction shortly, according to a statement released today.
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