Don’t wave through Google/Wiz deal, Balanced Economy Project tells European Commission

Balanced Economy Project, along with a coalition of civil society organisations, has filed a submission to the European Commission on Google’s proposed takeover of Wiz (a cloud security provider). At a colossal $32 billion, it’s would be Google’s largest acquisition to date.

This is a highly risky deal because Google already dominates key parts of the digital economy in terms of scale and market power.  If Wiz – a company that helps organisations secure systems across different cloud providers – is absorbed by an already major cloud platform, that is owned by a dominant Big Tech company, customers could be pushed into a single “walled garden”. This means they are trapped, with few options. It would be harder and costlier to switch, to combine providers, or shop around. The harms could be manifold: less choice, weaker competition, higher prices and slower improvements in security and innovation.

Overall a greater harm would threaten. Cloud services underpin critical parts of the economy and public services, so greater dependence on a small number of powerful providers is likely to increase systemic risk when things go wrong – as we have seen with numerous outages in recent years. This is a serious public interest concern, and should be treated as such by regulators, in addition to the clear competition problems this deal raises.  

We are urging the Commission to open an in-depth Phase II investigation and not to wave this deal through.