US Gov't Lobbied EU To Approve Oracle-Sun Merger

littlekorea writes "Cables leaked by Wikileaks have revealed that the U.S. Government actively pressured the EU Competition Commissioner to approve Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The cable reveals that the U.S. went to great lengths to discover how the competition commissioner felt about the 'pro-competitive' nature of open source software and whether this would represent a threat to the US$7.4 billion deal."

Comments

It's only right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the EU decide this on their own? It's better that the Worlds Remaining Superpower (tm) be there to ensure they make the right decision. And it's Oracle. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:It's only right!

[Anonymous Coward]

US Government has also decided that MS Windows monopoly is good (for US). It does not matter if technical development is halted by the monopoly as long as it brings taxes to US.
And US was the "market economy" which has grown from competitive freedom of markets. Well, if you control whole world, why bother to care about free markets and competition.

Re:It's only right!

[PopeRatzo]

Why shouldn't the US Government have an interest in a third parties decision affecting two large US companies?

The problem is not that the US Government has an interest. The problem is they are encouraging the wrong side of the argument.

The fact that anti-trust laws are being ignored at this level is the best example that our government has been completely co-opted by corporate interests. We are no longer a country for the people. Now we are a country for the corporations.

Re:It's only right!

[SomeKDEUser]

But on the other hand, they are working hard on the latter. With this difference that Somali communication infrastructure will still be better.

The difference between a first and a third world nation is not the average income, that changes quickly. It is the infrastructure: road, rail sanitation, power, communication. But also the bureaucracy and the education of the population.

People who want no/small government are exactly asking for third world infrastructure.

Re:It's only right!

[TheSpoom]

Yes, because Oracle DB is completely different from MySQL, Oracle Linux is completely different from Solaris, and they have no competition between them whatsoever. Yup.

Re:It's only right!

[Kagetsuki]

You don't know how true that is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTRON

From the link: "The Japanese government planned to introduce the Matsushita PC in its schools, but the United States government objected, claiming that the plan constituted market intervention and threatened Japan with sanctions (partly at the request of Microsoft)."

I've seen a BTRON machine and it was impressive, easily better than Windows of the era. It should be noted that BTRON was an open OS and was developed by a group of companies who had a mutually vested interest. It lives on however as iTRON, which is the OS in things like car control systems, washing machine fuzzy logic controllers, refrigerators, TV's, cell phones etc. Next time you pop open something and find a chip with "Renesas" printed on it you can probably assume it's got iTRON on it.

It's not that serious, really

[F69631]

Lobbying isn't that bad. USA officials had arrived to one conclusion, felt that the issue was very important to them and communicated that to EU officials. Regular co-operative communication between officials of two political bodies. If EU officials then arrived to a result which (considering all things, including any political capital gained or lost) was bad for us as EU citizens, then our own officials are to blame. Personally, I don't think that they did and there is nothing in TFA that implies otherwise.

In other words, the cables show that EU and USA officials of corresponding organizations actually communicate with each other when handling international issues. Nothing to see here.

Re:It's not that serious, really

[AlecC]

I agree - except that it should not have come out via Wikileaks. The US is entitled to lobby on behalf of two large US corporations which have decided to merge. But is should do so in the open - as should all lobbyists.

Re:The weird thing.

[Xest]

Because they wish to do business in the EU, you know, the biggest economy in the world.

Europe's opinion matters because not being able to do business in such a large economy would make it pointless to procede with the takeover anyway as they'd have been better off not taking over Sun and keeping their EU business than taking over Sun and being ineligible to do business in the EU.

It's worth pointing out it's a two way street too. BAE, a British defence firm, bribed Saudi officials to get an aircraft deal, but despite them being a British company and the deal being with Saudi Arabia and hence having nothing to do with the US, the US still fined the company and BAE accepted and paid the fine because it'd rather continue to be able to do business in the US, with by far the largest military expenditure in the world, than not pay the fine and not be able to do business in the US.

This is the thing with an increasingly globalised world, companies are responsible for their actions wherever they do business, not just where they were founded or are headquartered- if you want to take European money, you need to play by European rules.

Re:Good

[EasyTarget]

"What is the EU going to do if they merge in the US, prevent the new merged company from doing any business in the EU?"

DOH! Yes; Precisely that.

Isolationism does not just mean saying 'Fuck You' to your neighbors; It also means they shrug and say 'Fuck You Too' right back.