Software giant Oracle has been cleared by the US Department of Justice to acquire Sun Microsystems for US$7.4bn, an important first hurdle.
The company still has to get the blessing of the European Commission which may take the company up on potential anti-trust questions surrounding Sun’s MySQL database technology which Sun bought last year for US$1bn.
Combined with Oracle’s traditional database products the EU may raise concerns.
The US Department of Justice cleared the acquisition after several months’ investigation into whether the deal could damage competition in the technology industry.
It is understood that the investigation encountered issues around the licensing of Java, a Sun programming language which runs on more than 7bn mobile devices and PCs around the world.
By John Kennedy
