By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS: Alphabet’s Google gained unconditional EU antitrust approval on Tuesday for its $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz, its biggest ever deal, after regulators said the deal would not raise any competition concerns.
The deal, announced in March last year, would boost Google‘s presence in cybersecurity and in the cloud computing sector where it competes with bigger rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft.
“Google stands behind Amazon and Microsoft in terms of market shares in cloud infrastructure, and our assessment confirmed that customers will continue to have credible alternatives and the ability to switch providers,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
The European Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, said any data acquired by Google via the deal is not commercially sensitive and can also be assessed by other security software companies.
Tech deals have in recent years triggered greater regulatory scrutiny because of concerns that these could boost big companies’ market power and shut out smaller rivals.
