Ballmer speechless over Oracle-Sun deal

By now, you must have heard the announcement that Oracle will acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. Some reporters managed to catch up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow, where they asked for his opinion of the deal. Ballmer is rarely at a loss for words, so it was surprising that he didn't have any comments ready. According to ZDNet, he said, "I need to think about it. I am very surprised."

Some observers think that the Oracle-Sun deal will benefit Microsoft, when all is said and done. For one, former Sun executive Miko Matsumura thinks that the deal could drive computer maker HP into a tighter relationship with Microsoft. Others fear that MySQL will no longer thrive now that its owner will be assimilated into the world's largest enterprise database vendor--which can only be good for Microsoft's own SQL Server software.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at ZDNet

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