EU Regulators Delay Google's Motorola Buy, Seeking More Info 45
judgecorp writes "The European Commission is delaying Google's proposed purchase of Motorola Mobility, saying it wants 'more infromation.' Europe may be nervous of the power the purchase will give Google in the mobile space."
Wonder how much Apple paid the EU regulators... (Score:0, Insightful)
Motorola Problems (opposite of Solutions) is a US company.
Google is a US company.
Why is the EU even getting involved at all? This has nothing to do with them, other than the fact that some of their lobbyists see Apple dollars and that hamstringing this merger would help keep Apple with the upper hand in this patent polka that all the phone companies are forced to play.
Maybe the EU should look at other things like banks, and their problems.
Dangerous delays (Score:4, Insightful)
Although I am generally in favor of the government organizations checking on private companies (I think there is no such thing as a *fully* free market), I think the EU is sometimes overshooting their goal. It seems to me that there is no reason to disallow this deal. So generally what happens is just the delay, which can kill the value of the company that is being taken over. Sure, large take overs take time, but adding time to the deal in this fast paced sector can cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars really quick. Hopefully they will not take months (again) to validate the deal.
Let's be honest... (Score:3, Insightful)
And you don't see the difference between a US regulatory agency looking into a merger between two American companies and an EU agency doing the same?
Isn't it odd how people still believe a multinational corporation is "American" in spite of all of our previous discussions about how they have restructured themselves to minimize their US corporate taxes, spreading their assets and operations in different jurisdictions, and embedding their revenue gathering into many world markets?
On the one hand, I don't feel that these corporations deserve a very protective stance by the American people, since they have clearly turned their backs on us and attempted to minimize their obligations to us. On the other hand, I also see that their future depends on their access to multiple world markets, so they would be foolish to take an isolationist stance with what is a strategic merger of assets and operations.