Pressure builds in Europe over Google’s $32 billion Wiz deal
Civil society groups urge Brussels to open a deeper antitrust probe as the February 10 deadline nears.
As European antitrust officials approach a key deadline in Alphabet’s proposed acquisition of Wiz, a coalition of civil society organizations is urging regulators not to wave the deal through.
By February 10, 2026, the European Commission must decide whether to clear Google’s $32 billion purchase of the cloud security company or open a far more searching, in-depth investigation. In recent days, pressure on the Commission has intensified, with a group of advocacy organizations formally warning that the deal could entrench Google’s power across cloud computing and cybersecurity, two sectors increasingly viewed as critical digital infrastructure.
The submission, filed jointly by Rebalance Now, the Open Markets Institute, the Balanced Economy Project, SOMO and Article 19, argues that the transaction raises “serious doubts” under European merger rules and should not be approved at the preliminary review stage .
At the center of the concern is Wiz’s role as an independent, multi-cloud security platform. As a stand-alone company, Wiz provides security visibility across competing cloud environments, including those operated by Google’s largest rivals. That neutrality, the groups argue, is precisely what becomes fragile once the company is absorbed by a hyperscale cloud provider with its own strategic incentives.
The organizations contend that even if Google maintains public commitments to keep Wiz interoperable across rival clouds, ownership alone would give it the ability, and incentive, to subtly tilt the product in its favor. Rather than overtly cutting off competitors, they warn of “soft degradation”: slower feature parity, less reliable integrations, or quieter shifts in engineering priorities that could gradually steer customers toward Google Cloud.
Such changes, they argue, would be difficult for regulators to detect or remedy, particularly within the European Commission’s initial Phase I review, which is designed to identify clear-cut cases rather than assess complex technical behavior.
The submission also highlights broader conglomerate effects. By integrating Wiz into its expanding cloud 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 security vendors. In cloud procurement, where customers often favor simplicity and perceived stability, even modest bundling advantages can reshape competition over time, the groups argue.
Another focal point is data. Wiz’s position as a cross-cloud security layer gives it deep visibility into how customers configure and operate systems across competing platforms. The organizations warn that, post-acquisition, this vantage point could provide Google with strategic insights unavailable to rival cloud providers, reinforcing information asymmetries even without any unlawful data misuse.
Taken together, these dynamics, they argue, risk increasing customer lock-in. Once a security platform is deeply embedded into governance, compliance and incident-response workflows, switching providers can be operationally disruptive and risky. Integrating Wiz more tightly into Google’s cloud stack could therefore reduce customers’ practical ability to move either their security tools or their cloud infrastructure elsewhere.
