It’s the economy, too
In this article regarding Oracle’s takeover attempt of PeopleSoft, James Gattuso makes the point quite well that the anti-trust inquisitions by the US Department of Justice are simply not relevant in the context of this merger.
The question for U.S. antitrust regulators is whether the merger would substantially lessen competition in the relevant market. But what exactly is the relevant market here? The bulk of Oracle’s business is in databases, but PeopleSoft doesn’t play in that field. The two do, however, go head-to-head in a lower-profile market known in the software industry as “ERP,” — “enterprise resource planning.” Essentially, this is the provision of software to help businesses with such things as inventory, customer service and human resources.
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As it turns out, neither Oracle nor PeopleSoft dominate this market. The leader is a German firm, SAP, which by one measure has 25 percent of that market.
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To get around inconvenient market-share numbers, some critics of the acquisition have urged a bit of market gerrymandering. Instead of looking at the whole ERP market, regulators would look at smaller fields such as inventory software, human resource software and the like.
Why would a pro-business administration be focusing on such anti-growth measures as blocking business initiatives? Especially ones that could help us compete better with dominant players overseas.
The reason I ask is because there does not seem to be any anti-trust issues from a common sense perspective. Oracle and PeopleSoft don’t make the same type of products. I would really hate to find out that there is some kind of politics going on here when Americans really need jobs. Jobs that are usually created as a result of business activity. Business activity like an Oracle and PeopleSoft merger.
This is a real good example of why W always wants the ability to hire and fire in these new departments that have been created. Hiring and promoting good people and firing morons is essential to running a good operation.
Gattuso sums everything up quite well:
Nevertheless, antitrust regulators may still stop the PeopleSoft acquisition. One is tempted not to feel too sorry for Oracle, as it was the first to set the hounds loose. Yet the real losers would be consumers, who would enjoy a slightly less efficient, slightly less vibrant, software industry.
But I would like to extend the loser list to include the economy. And I think the effect of blocking such a large business initiative in this nascent period of market recovery will have a chilling affect on the broader market more than just “slightly less”.
It is stunts like this that makes people hate politicians bureaucrats so much.
{via: Technology Liberation Front}