The European Commission has granted Google approval to finalize its acquisition of Wiz. Market research has shown that there are sufficient alternatives available.
Europe gives the green light for Google’s acquisition of Wiz. Google announced last year that it would acquire the security firm for $32 billion. The European Commission approves the acquisition without any additional conditions.
A market survey of customers and competing providers revealed that the acquisition of Wiz does not hinder competition in the cloud security niche in which it operates. The Commission ruled that there are enough alternatives for companies to switch to if they do not agree with the takeover. Potential scenarios where Google might bundle Wiz products with its own cloud services or run them exclusively on its own cloud infrastructure were already taken into account.
The Commission states that Google itself faces more than enough competition from Microsoft and AWS in the cloud market. Adding Wiz to its portfolio will not suddenly disrupt those market dynamics. According to the investigation, there is no risk that Google could obtain ‘commercially sensitive’ data from competitors with whom Wiz still collaborates as a result of the acquisition.
27 billion dollars
Google announced the acquisition of Wiz last year. The tech giant had to dig deep into its pockets: Wiz rejected an initial bid of $23 billion. A second bid of $32 billion ultimately proved impossible to turn down. Wiz specializes in securing cloud applications in multi-cloud environments.