UK to probe Google takeover of Looker Data Sciences
The $2.6bn deal may weaken competition, according to the UK Competition and Markets Authority
The UK has formally announced a merger probe into Google’s $2.6bn takeover of Looker Data Sciences a week after its anti-trust watchdogs raised concerns about Amazon’s purchase of a minority stake in Deliveroo.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in a Tuesday statement that it will verify whether the Alphabet unit’s acquisition might substantially weaken competition.
The CMA said it set a February 13 deadline to take a decision in this first-phase review. The companies were told about the merger inquiry on Monday.
The British competition regulator is taking a tough look a technology deals. Last week, UK watchdogs threatened Amazon with an extended competition review of its Deliveroo deal unless the e-commerce giant addressed concerns that customers, restaurants and grocers would face higher prices.
Google announced in June that it planned to buy US-based Looker for its cloud unit, which lags far behind Amazon and Microsoft with just 4% of the cloud-computing infrastructure market as of 2018, according to the most-recent figures from analyst Gartner. US regulators cleared the deal in November.
Bloomberg