Groups Warn $32B Google-Wiz Deal Threatens Cloud Competition

A coalition of civil society organizations argue that Google’s proposed acquisition of Wiz poses a substantial risk to competition within the cloud and cybersecurity sectors.

See Also: Alleviating Compliance Pain Points in the Cloud Era

The organizations want the European Commission to conduct a detailed antitrust review of the $32 billion deal since they say it would threaten multi-cloud neutrality, increase customer lock-in and entrench Google’s already expansive digital ecosystem. The European Commission will decide Feb. 10 whether to conduct a more in-depth review of the Google-Wiz deal or clear it without further scrutiny.

“The concentration enables Google, a hyper scale cloud provider, to acquire and control a leading multi-cloud security control layer, creating powerful incentives and mechanisms to foreclose rivals in both cloud and cloud security,” the Balanced Economy Project, Open Markets Institute, Rebalance Now, SOMO and Article 19 wrote in a six-page submission to the European Commission.

Bloomberg said in June that officials in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division met with Google and Wiz as well as competitors and customers to assess if the deal would illegally limit competition in the marketplace. Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport said in November that Wiz cleared the Justice Department’s antitrust review. Neither Google nor Wiz responded to Information Security Media Group’s inquiries (see: Why the $32B Google-Wiz Deal Caught the Eye of US Regulators).

How Google Could Disadvantage Rivals By Controlling Wiz

By buying Wiz, the organizations said Google gains a foothold into a vital layer of the cloud ecosystem that functions as an impartial infrastructure component across competing clouds including AWS, Azure and Oracle. This acquisition gives Google the ability to shape the performance, availability and future direction of Wiz in ways that favor the Google Cloud platform, which could exclude or marginalize rivals.

“In addition to threatening the resilience of the core functions of our economies, the transaction creates credible and interlocking risks of conglomerate leveraging and ecosystem entrenchment and increased lock-in, particularly through non-price and technical parameters that are difficult to assess and remedy,” the organizations wrote.

Google could leverage its control over Wiz to foreclose rivals by delaying or deprioritizing feature parity for AWS and Azure, offering weaker support or integration performance for non-Google environments, and quietly adjusting how resources are allocated across cloud platforms. In addition, Google could bundle Wiz with GCP or Google Gemini artificial intelligence tools, reducing opportunities for independent security firms.

“Foreclosure is most likely to occur through subtle, cumulative forms of discrimination rather than an overt refusal to supply, through slower feature parity for non-GCP environments, reduced priority for AWS/Azure connectors and integrations, differences in reliability or responsiveness in non-GCP deployments, or support and escalation practices that systematically favor GCP-native deployments,” the organizations wrote.

Once customers adopt Wiz as part of the Google Cloud stack, they will be far less likely to migrate to a competitor, even if competitors offer better pricing or more innovative services. This reduced mobility in turn will lower competitive pressure on Google, giving it the freedom to steer its product road map in ways that may prioritize Google’s strategic objectives over broader market interoperability, they said.

“Cloud security tooling is typically embedded into day-to-day governance and operational processes, including compliance reporting, vulnerability management, security monitoring, incident response workflows and remediation automation,” the coalition said. “Over time, this may reduce customers’ practical ability to change either cloud provider or security vendor without significant disruption.”

How Wiz’s Visibility Into Rivals Could Fuel GCP Development

Wiz has visibility into security telemetry across multiple cloud environments, and Google could use these insights to inform product development, tailor migration strategies to target competitors’ weaknesses, and shape customer messaging using real-world usage patterns that others don’t have access to. This informational asymmetry would be nearly impossible for competitors to counter.

“Google would have increased incentives to leverage this cross-cloud telemetry and associated insights to reinforce its competitive position in cloud and cloud security, including by shaping product strategy and roadmap prioritization, targeting customers with tailored migration and bundling narratives, and optimizing commercial and technical offerings in ways that competing cloud providers cannot replicate,” the organizations wrote.

Recent hyperscaler outages demonstrate the fragility of centralizing too much operational infrastructure in the hands of a few dominant providers, and the EU’s growing dependency on a handful of U.S.-based tech giants is as a direct threat to digital sovereignty. By integrating Wiz into GCP, Google brings more functionality under its umbrella, leaving European enterprises and governments with fewer real options.

“Cloud computing and cloud security services have become essential digital infrastructure for a wide range of sectors in the EU economy. Recent outages and cybersecurity incidents affecting hyperscalers propagate rapidly. This transaction risks further entrenching Google’s already powerful position in the broader digital ecosystem and extending that power into adjacent layers of cloud and cloud security,” the organizations wrote.

The complexity, subtlety and long-term structural implications of this transaction make it unsuitable for clearance in the European Commission’s initial review due Feb. 10. The authors urge the Commission to gather input from customers, partners and rivals, as well as documentation on Google’s strategies, incentives and integration plans to understand the impact on competition, innovation and resilience.

“This is not a case that can be safely resolved through unconditional Phase I clearance, nor is it suitable for resolution within Phase I through straightforward commitments,” the organizations wrote. “It is our position that the commission requires a more complete evidential basis and market validation to reach a robust conclusion.”