Google-Wiz deal expected to be cleared by EU following meeting with regulators, report says
The $32 billion acquisition is likely to avoid an in-depth Phase II inquiry, according to specialist news service MLex, with Brussels facing a February 10 decision deadline.
Google and Wiz executives met with European Union merger officials last Tuesday in discussions that appear to have eased the path for the technology industry’s largest cybersecurity acquisition. According to MLex, a specialized regulatory news service, the $32 billion transaction is now expected to avoid an in-depth EU merger inquiry, a signal that Brussels may be leaning toward a swift Phase I clearance.
The European Commission faces a hard deadline of 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. The MLex report suggests that, despite mounting political and civil-society pressure, regulators are not currently inclined to pursue the more aggressive route.
That prospect 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 days, a coalition of European advocacy organizations has 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.
Such behavior, they argue, would be difficult for regulators to detect within the Commission’s initial Phase I review, which is designed to identify clear-cut competition problems rather than evaluate complex technical conduct over time. The organizations have therefore pressed Brussels to open a deeper investigation capable of examining how incentives might evolve after the takeover.
The submission also highlights broader conglomerate effects. By integrating Wiz into its expanding security portfolio, already strengthened through earlier acquisitions, Google could bundle services in ways that make its ecosystem more attractive to enterprise buyers while raising barriers for independent vendors.
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, effectively paving the way for the companies to close the transaction.
