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Comment by kman82 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is an American company. Activision-Blizzard is an American company. I get that the UK is an important market but how can their regulators block a deal that possibly most of the rest of the world wants. Who determines that the UK has the power to block this? Can somebody legally explain this to me ELI5?

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Their market power is what determines it, if Microsoft wants access to that market they have to play by that markets rules. They'll have to decide if owning Activision is worth more than having access to the UK marketplace & talent pool.

This didn't make sense to me either. Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard should just ignore them, they don't have any jurisdiction over American companies. Microsoft probably has more power over the UK than the UK has over Microsoft. Imagine if all the Windows machines quit working in the UK. Shit would probably fall apart real quick.

I really doubt that it would happen real quickly. but it would be a very stupid move for MS/ Azure

It would highly likely lead to the downfall of MS (in the EU/ europe anyway) with the UK putting massive amount of money behind a version linux. ie look at what google did to linux for the mobile phones! and remember what apple did to unix? .It would also allow the EU to kick MS massively - Germany has been trying to go for linux for some time

even the US is trying to block this merger https://www.eurogamer.net/ftc-suing-to-block-microsofts-69bn...

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