Responding to the European Commission's objections to its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle issued a statement earlier this month that its acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high-end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The company also said it plans to "vigorously oppose" the European Commission's Statement of Objections and that the evidence against the Commission's position is "overwhelming."
The company said it is confident it will ultimately obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction.
On April 20, 2009, Sun and Oracle announced a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun., in a transaction valued at approximately $7.4 billion. The U.S. Department of Justice subsequently approved Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems and terminated the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act.
Commenting on European Commission's Statement of Objections, Oracle said it reveals "a profound misunderstanding" of both database competition and open source dynamics. "It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone."
Oracle also noted that the database market is "intensely competitive" with at least eight strong players, and that Oracle and MySQL are very different database products. "There is no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products," Oracle stated.