The UK government has announced it is investigating Google's acquisition of technology company Looker. The government says the move raises concerns that an it could give Google advantage and reduce competition in the cloud computing sector. 
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian announced his intention to acquire Looker in June. The deal was aimed at closing the gap with Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which have large market shares.
The United Kingdom is in a strange situation because of Brexit. However, it follows the competition law that applies in the European Union, which Google has violated many times. Alphabet Inc. has received fines of $9 billion from the European Union in the past two years for various services. Now, the E.U. is launching an investigation into Google, specifically its Chrome browser and data collection.
However, collection data browser are not the same thing.
The belief that Google's acquisition of Looker reduces competition may not be true.
Microsoft has its Power BI product and cloud service that serve as tools to attract new Azure customers, even though they are not technically part of Azure. AWS, on the other hand, with its QuickSight BI service and cloud services like Elastic MapReduce, Redshift, and the old S3, is also a strong force in the market.
Salesforce also announced in June that it wanted to acquire Tableau. The acquisition was completed in August. This is another company that is doing very well.
Without Looker, Google's only BI product would be the Data Studio product , which is more of a data visualization/presentation service that powers the G Suite platform
So Google needs Looker, not to reduce competition, as the UK government claims, but to strengthen. AWS and Azure need this pressure and competition to bring even more innovation and not rest on their laurels.
The Competition Authority has requested formal written comments “from any interested party” by December 20. Given that only 3 weeks are given for comments, the investigation is likely to be completed soon. The UK government’s request for an investigation shows how critical data and BI products are in the cloud computing market.
