Wednesday, November 11, 2009

EUROPEAN ANTITRUST POLICY

From The Economist (link):

"Nevertheless, it is unclear how a transatlantic row can be avoided along the lines of the spat in 2001, when a planned merger between General Electric and Honeywell caused a stink. The commission worries that a union between Oracle and Sun would reduce competition in the market for corporate databases. Oracle is the world’s biggest seller of proprietary software to run such databases, with a market share of nearly 50%. Sun is the owner of MySQL, the most widely used “open-source” database software, which already competes with Oracle’s products and could become more of a threat in the future. Neelie Kroes, Europe’s competition commissioner, spoke of her “serious concerns” that the deal would reduce choice and lead to higher prices."

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