Translated: Google makes biggest acquisition in its history in the Trump 2.0 era at a time when it is in the crosshairs of its competitors

Dirk Auer March 20, 2025

Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at ICLE, was quoted in an Observador story about Wiz joining Google Cloud. Read the full article here.

Translated from Portuguese to English: The FTC is now led by Andrew Ferguson, who was appointed by Trump in January. Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), acknowledges to the Observer the logic of “the previous FTC being either more aggressive or very skeptical about mergers ,” but also says that “the current leadership doesn’t seem to be particularly friendly to Google.” He therefore considers “that, although [the political context] may have played a role”, it probably “was not as big a role as one might initially think”.