Acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation
The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation was completed on January 27, 2010. After the acquisition was completed, Oracle, only a software vendor prior to the merger, owned Sun's hardware product lines, such as SPARC Enterprise, as well as Sun's software product lines, including the Java programming language.
| Initiator | Oracle Corporation |
|---|---|
| Target | Sun Microsystems |
| Type | Full acquisition |
| Cost | $7.4 billion (value) $5.4 billion (net cash / debt) |
| Initiated | April 20, 2009 |
| Completed | January 27, 2010 |
Concerns about Sun's position as a competitor to Oracle were raised by antitrust regulators, open source advocates, customers, and employees over the acquisition. The European Commission delayed the acquisition for several months over questions about Oracle's plans for MySQL, Sun's competitor to Oracle Database. The Commission finally approved the takeover, apparently pressured by the United States to do so, according to a diplomatic cable leaked in September 2011.