EC grants Oracle extra week for USD7.4bn merger

Mon Nov 23 2009, 09:08 AM UTC

The European Commission (EC) is granting Oracle a one-week extension to its deadline for the approval of its proposed USD7.4bn merger with Sun Microsystems. The deadline is now January 27. Oracle requested the extension because of the disruption caused by Thanksgiving to business schedules.

Deal Details

The EC is concerned about the US-approved merger in part because Oracle would acquire MySQL, which was bought by Sun in 2008. MySQL is a relational database management system used by sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Google. The EC is concerned that Oracle's control over the system would hinder competition in database markets. However, Oracle claims it will not have an unfair advantage because the system is open source.

Former MySQL shareholder and consultant Florian Mueller says the EC is right to object and that the extra week is of no real use to Oracle. "One more week won't transform a digital product like MySQL into a community project that could be developed by volunteers just because it's open source", says Mueller.

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