Google's $32 billion Wiz acquisition approved by EU
The deal has avoided an in-depth Phase II inquiry after also being cleared by U.S. regulators.
The $32 billion acquisition of Wiz by Google has been approved by the European Union. The transaction has avoided an in-depth EU merger inquiry after receiving a swift Phase I clearance.
"Google stands behind Amazon and Microsoft in terms of market shares in cloud infrastructure, and our assessment confirmed that customers will continue to have credible alternatives and the ability to switch providers," EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
The European Commission had until today (February 10) to decide whether to approve Alphabet’s purchase of the Israeli cloud-security company or to escalate the review into a lengthy Phase II investigation. Despite mounting political and civil-society pressure, regulators chose not to pursue the more aggressive route.
The deal cleared a key regulatory barrier last November after the U.S. Department of Justice ended its antitrust review of the deal. The Justice Department’s decision to terminate its investigation was recorded on October 24, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s website, marking an “early termination” of the mandatory review period. The designation means that U.S. antitrust officials found no grounds to delay or block the merger.
The EU approval will come as a relief to Google, which has framed the acquisition as a way to strengthen security across cloud computing at a time of rising cyber threats.
In recent weeks, a coalition of European advocacy organizations had urged the Commission not to wave the transaction through at the preliminary stage. Groups including Rebalance Now, the Open Markets Institute, the Balanced Economy Project, SOMO, and Article 19 filed a joint submission warning that the acquisition could entrench Google’s power in two sectors increasingly treated as critical digital infrastructure: cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Their core argument centers on Wiz’s independence. As a stand-alone company, Wiz functions as a neutral layer that monitors security across rival clouds. Once owned by Google, the groups contend that neutrality becomes fragile. Even without overt discrimination, they warn of the risk of “soft degradation,” subtle shifts such as slower feature parity for competing platforms or quieter changes in engineering priorities that could gradually steer customers toward Google Cloud.
