European Commission Approves Oracle-Sun Merger 144
rubycodez writes "The anti-trust body of the EU, the European Commission, has approved Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, believing competition would be preserved. It saw PostgreSQL as a viable independent alternative to MySQL and that market access to Java would not be restricted. Uncertainty about Sun's future has cost over a billion dollars in lost sales in the past year."
Re:Rrrreally (Score:5, Informative)
Okay [sys-con.com].
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison claims the European Commission’s prolonged investigation of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun, which isn’t expected to finish much before the agency’s mid-January deadline, is costing Sun $100 million a month in revenues and a weakened revenue stream will impact how many employees Sun gets to keep if and when the acquisition is approved.
And this isn't the only citation you can find.
"lost sales" (Score:3, Informative)
Pfft. Same argument as the RIAA about piracy. "We certainly would have made $x bazillion, if only..."
Please, if you ever want to aspire to anything higher than tabloid journalism, do at the very least two things:
1 - add the word "estimated" or something to that effect when you're pulling figures out of your (or someone elses) ass
2 - do not use the word "cost" for lost sales or other imaginary did-not-happen income. Cost is when an expense has happened, i.e. money has been spent. Money that never came in is never a "cost".
Re:Rrrreally (Score:3, Informative)
Making false statements about financials in a public company leads people to spend a fair bit of uncomfortable time in prison.
If Larry Ellison is making those statements, you can be 100% sure they can be backed up with hard financial data.