Is Oracle giving into pressure from European Regulators over its proposed multibillion purchase of Sun Microsystems and the open source MySQL database Sun oversees? No way, company reps say. But is there more to the story? Database Journal takes a look.
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Oracle today denied a report in a New York newspaper that CEO Larry Ellison is backing down in a dispute with the European Union over the Sun Microsystems acquisition and will acquiesce to EU concerns regarding the ownership and management of the MySQL database.
The New York Post ran an article citing two sources that claimed Ellison is now willing to create a separate entity inside of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) to house the MySQL database software business in order to get the deal completed before a hearing on December 10 by the European Commission.
The Post did not have comment from Oracle, but a spokesperson for the database giant categorically denied the claim to InternetNews.com. “It’s completely untrue. We have no clue where they got it from, and we’re not saying anything else,” said Oracle spokesperson Karen Tillman.
Yet IT analyst Merv Adrian, president of IT Market Strategy, said it could have gone either way.
“It’s always possible that ideas are floated and denied in public, regardless of what ‘official’ statements say. What we learned was that the market liked the idea that Oracle might show some flexibility. What we did not learn – publicly – was whether any of the relevant EU people felt the same way,” he told InternetNews.com in an e-mail.
