Leak reveals US Government lobbied on behalf of Oracle. | Hacker News Reader

Leak reveals US Government lobbied on behalf of Oracle.

itnews.com.au

171 pointspwg29 comments

There is no big secret here, just a general lack of awareness of how the government works. Here is a press release from the Department of Justice's Antitrust division from 2009 indicating that it approved the Sun/Oracle merger, that it was disappointed to see that the European Commission did not approve, and that it was going to to be advocating on Oracle's behalf: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2009/251782...

"After conducting a careful investigation of the proposed transaction between Oracle and Sun, the Department's Antitrust Division concluded that the merger is unlikely to be anticompetitive. [...] At this point in its process, it appears that the EC holds a different view. We remain hopeful that the parties and the EC will reach a speedy resolution that benefits consumers in the Commission's jurisdiction.

[...]

"The Department and the European Commission have a strong and positive relationship on competition policy matters. The two competition authorities have enjoyed close and cooperative relations. The Antitrust Division will continue to work constructively with the EC and competition authorities in other jurisdictions to preserve sound antitrust enforcement policies that benefit consumers around the world."

It would be a surprise if the government - or indeed, any government - was not lobbying on behalf of its domestic industrial concerns. The basic purpose of embassies throughout history has been to promote trade. There were embassies long before there was any such thing as tourism.

They did it to protect jobs. Sun claimed to have to cut 3000 jobs because of the EU approval delay. The US probably was trying to rush them so the merger could go through and Sun would not go bankrupt.

It's all in the cable. Read it for yourself, and then decide if this government intervention was a good or bad thing.

Note: Above, I have not given my opinion on this. I have not said, "this is good." I have only given my speculation as to the reasons the US gov would do this based on the cable.

Direct cable link: http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09BRUSSELS1455&q...

As they should have. I would expect any EU investigation into a US company would (or should) have US gov officials talking to their counterparts in the EU.

No big fan of Oracle, but the antitrust issues were nonsense anyway, mostly talked up by people who had vested commercial interests in seeing MySQL spun out.

But mysql was originally European, so there was some strange extra significance.

I didn't mean to imply that the EU shouldn't have run an investigation. That is perfectly fair and logical.

But once that occurred US gov involvement should also be expected.

You wait 'til you read about what they do for Boeing!

Or even worse for United Fruit Co.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

Or more modern, Exxon. I don't have such a problem with doing this kind of stuff in europe for Oracle, or uselessly for boeing (airbus will always get better treatment in europe). But you want to see some real cloak and dagger shit, read about commodities.

Also BAE in the UK - Blair stopped an enquiry into the huge amount of alleged corruption associated with an enormous arms sale to Saudi Arabia:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk/Corruption-inquiry-into-6...

Do you have a URL? Inquiring minds want to know.

I read about it in a book by an ex-CIA guy from the Clinton years. Can't remember the guy's name now, but remember thinking at the time (2004 or so) that it had almost certainly gotten worse since then. His allegations were that State and CIA were frequently involved in securing access to oil in the 3rd world for American corporations, because it was deemed a national security priority.

In the way of circumstantial evidence, here's an article about Shell (netherlands) being fined for bribing everyone they interacted with in Nigeria in order to get into the oilfields: http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2010/12/25/wikileaks-shells-as...

ExxonMobil has a huge presence in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Khazakhstan.. you do the math.

Was the book See No Evil by Robert Baer?

http://www.amazon.com/See-No-Evil-Soldier-Terrorism/dp/14000...

The movie Syriana was loosely based on this book.

Yes! Thanks, what a guess. That's exactly the one, great book.

Not sure if this is the book but Confessions of an Economic Hitman details how this process evolved since the 70s into the full-blow economic warfare we (our reps, leaders, and big corps) practice today.

Or the auto giants...

But practically every state will lobby for their large companies.

> But practically every state will lobby for their large companies.

One thing I realized when I moved to Italy was that "business friendly" does not refer to large corporations. All countries take care of those (more or less). It refers to fewer rules, regulations and taxes for smaller, more marginal firms.

Is this a surprise? Governments and industry are joined at the hip. There's a hell of a revolving door in all governments; business people become politicians and vice versa and for some reason we accept it.

Or [soulless corporate moochers bribe] politicians and vice versa and for some reason we accept it.

Most politicians are lifers. After practicing (and failing) law, of course.

Is this very unusual? UK Trade & Investment is a government agency that does the same as far as I can tell:

UKTI works to boost UK export performance, attract foreign direct investment to the UK, and enhance the UK’s reputation in global markets. We are the best trade promotion organisation in the developed world

http://www.ukti.gov.uk/home.html?guid=none

I'm pretty sure the government couldn't afford to let Sun fail, every piece of software that I've seen with even a remote affiliation with the US gov. has been built on Java.

Why not allow companies to get approved before announcing it to the public? That way, the investors aren't taken for a wild ride as politicians battle it out in public.

Lobbying is disgusting - no matter who does it.

So what? Happens all the time.

I think taxpayer money shouldn't be secretly spent to support private company.

secretly

Thank you. We live in a democracy. We expect our governments to do things for us, and every four or five years we decide whether we like what they've done. That only works when they are transparent.

If the US government wants to shill for Larry, fine, but tell us so we can decide whether they are "Going to bat for American business and jobs."

"Going to bat for American business and jobs" is a bit of a lie since Oracle has roughly the same number of employees in both the Americas and the Asia Pacific regions and the number of employees in Europe, Middle East & Africa has been growing.

The US government shouldn't be shilling for anyone, Oracle should do it for themselves.

By “fine,” I mean, “Do it, but tell us and then be prepared to be judged in the next election.” I suspect we agree on how we would judge it if I were an American citizen entitled to vote on the Administration’s actions.

I wonder how Google feels about this leak.

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