Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Pull request accepted: You want to buy GitHub, Microsoft? Go for it – EU

Eurocrats reckon that anti-competitiveness from Redmond would be a massive foot-shooting exercise

The European Commission has given the thumbs up to Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub.

The EU took a look at the deal and concluded that, yup, everything would be fine and dandy.

It observed that “Microsoft would have no incentive to undermine the open nature of GitHub's platform”, something that Microsoft is all too aware of as the future CEO of GitHub, Nat Friedman, admitted “if Microsoft screws this up, we will lose the trust of developers for a generation”

The One Ring from Lord of the Rings

Deeper dive with GitHub Actions: One config file to rule them all and in the darkness bind them

READ MORE

The Commission reckoned that in the field of code collaboration and development environments, MicroGit would still “face significant competition from other players”.

As for if competition would be weakened as a result of the merger, the Commission thought not. It took a look at the chances of Microsoft using GitHub to drive users to Redmond's own development or cloud platforms and observed the simple fact that coders would simply up sticks and move elsewhere, thus devaluing the $7.5bn that Microsoft paid for GitHub.

So, in a statement that we hope does not come back to haunt it, the Commission “concluded that the transaction would raise no competition concerns in any of the affected markets" and cleared the case unconditionally.

And with that, Microsoft has cleared another hurdle in bringing GitHub into the fold. ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like