EU throws spanner into Oracle’s works
When Oracle's Larry Elisson announced in April that it would buy Sun Microsystems, it all looked like it would be a cake walk with regulators, as there was little overlap between the two. And indeed, the US regulators appear ready to approve the deal, however, the Europeans are not feeling that charitable. Although Sun’s MySQL database is miniscule compared to Oracle in the $18 billion worldwide market (MySQL’s market share is 0.5%, Oracle’s 49%), the Europeans have done their homework. MySQL, although distributed free now, is used by the Internet giants like Google and Yahoo and might just become a major player in the database business sometime in the future. Oracle would, following that logic, remove the potential big competitor by buying Sun. So the EU is now expected to demand Oracle sells MySQL before it gives the Sun deal its approval. But they should better be ready for the fight: Elisson is one of the toughest and roughest players known to business man. Read more: BusinessWeek
Become an Insider