Confirmed! Google is the second opponent to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King

In January 2023, information emerged that Google had taken a position as an opponent to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. While it was not a union with Sony to throw the agreement off, the company stated the reasons why it saw a risk in the acquisition for its competitive interests. Today, in the context of the UK regulator's blocking, it was confirmed that Google is the second opponent to the purchase.

The document that reports on the review process of the acquisition of Activision and its blocking was made public by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Immediately, the material has become the subject of analysis for all the information it provides, and this time it is the confirmation of the two opponents to the acquisition. As TweakTown shares, on page 337, the CMA cites what Microsoft said about the companies that do not want the purchase to take place.

In the section on the perspective of third parties involved, the CMA quotes Microsoft's statements: "Microsoft stated that the two main complainants against the deal (SIE and Google) have many reasons to maintain the status quo or undermine the merger to obtain greater benefits at the expense of game developers and players. It argued that, on this basis, the remedies offered by Microsoft for the cloud protect competition in a way that the ban will not. Microsoft noted that 'through the ban, the CMA is ensuring the continued success of entrenched competitors who have no incentives to expand competition'."

Recently, the sudden rise of artificial intelligence technology has seen the birth of a tough rivalry between Microsoft and Google, with the former taking advantage of what could be a new stage in the internet era. Bringing that to the world of video games, this year STADIA, Google's cloud gaming service, was shut down, and it failed miserably. At some point, it was stated that part of its collapse had to do with the purchase of Bethesda | ZeniMax and Microsoft's explicit intentions to take full advantage of the consolidation stage of the video game industry.

On the other hand, a recent report emerged indicating Samsung and Microsoft's intention to reach an agreement for Bing, the North American company's search engine powered by AI and the cloud, to be the default search engine on the South Korean company's mobile devices. It is said that there is panic in Google about what this could cause to its business related to the sector and the financial impact.