European Commission objects to Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems

The European Commission has issued a formal 'statement of objections' over Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems which had earlier obtained the approval of the U.S Department of Justice which expressed that the deal was unlikely to be anti-competitive. Oracle made public its plan to acquire Sun for USD 7.4 Billion in April this year.
The primary concern of the European Commission is Sun's open source MySQL database product. The acquisition by Oracle would have negative effects for the database products market with Oracle also marketing its own 'enterprise' database products.
Oracle in the meanwhile has asserted that the acquisition would not be anti-competitive, especially in the database market since MySQL is open source and it cannot be controlled by any entity. It asserted that the database products market had at least eight strong players including IBM and Microsoft. Oracle argues that the deal is essential for competition in the high-end server market claiming that the deal would revitalise Sun's Sparc processor and Solaris OS platforms. Sourced from: Reuters

Google book deal in violation of anti-trust laws?

The U.S. Department of Justice has argued for a New York Court to reject a settlement between Google and authors and publishers that would allow Google to create a digital library of their work. The DOJ said that its investigation into the settlement agreement was incomplete but it was likely to be in violation of copyright and anti-trust laws. It was felt that the settlement would empower book publishers to restrict price competition and also give Google exclusivity in the distribution of copyrighted works the authors of which are untraceable. The DOJ in its filing has urged the Court to reject the settlement in its present form to encourage the negotiation of a settlement which is more compliant with copyright and antitrust laws.
The proposed settlement is over Google's mammoth project at creating a digital library which will be made available online thereby creating a very high level of access to the works, but has given rise to fears over copyright protection, hence the proposed settlement with authors and publishers, to create a book rights registry and compensate authors and publishers whose work is being digitised. For more on the same, please visit: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1825836720090919