The Department of Justice’s recent antitrust review of Alphabet’s proposed $32 billion acquisition of the cybersecurity firm Wiz is just the latest in a long series of regulatory overreach that threatens to inadvertently create monopolies rather than prevent one. If this deal ends up being blocked, it would almost certainly cement the dominance of Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing while leaving smaller companies more vulnerable to ever-growing cyber threats.
Here’s the reality the DOJ seems to be missing: Google isn’t the tech titan they’re worried about, at least not in cloud computing. While most people think of them as the search engine giant, in the cloud services market they’re barely hanging on with just 12% market share. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, for comparison, command 30% and 21% of the market, respectively.
Google’s disadvantage here is becoming more dangerous as cyber threats evolve. 78 percent of Chief Information Security Officers now say that AI-powered threats are having a significant impact on their organizations, up from 73 percent in 2024. AI-powered bots enable threat actors to execute large-scale attacks with minimal effort, allowing even less capable adversaries to gain unauthorized access and disrupt services on a scale previously only seen by sophisticated, well-funded attackers. Yet despite Google’s strong AI performance, the company has struggled to translate that technological edge into cybersecurity market dominance.
Google believes that Wiz could change this. They’re not just another Silicon Valley upstart with a fancy app—they offer cyber protection to 50% of Fortune 100 companies with AI tools that catch threats which would otherwise bypass less sophisticated systems.
The DOJ is concerned that Wiz being acquired by Alphabet might restrict competitors’ access to the company’s security tools. This is not worth dismissing outright—such a move could have a genuinely anticompetitive impact. For their part, Alphabet has already promised to keep Wiz working with cloud systems from competitors including Amazon and Microsoft.
The DOJ’s case is another that seems to be uniquely targeted at Google while ignoring similar practices throughout the tech ecosphere—which is particularly ironic given that Google is far behind competitors in this field. For example, Microsoft bundles its security directly into Azure, essentially forcing customers to use their tools.
This selective enforcement, though, could hardly come at a worse time. Ransomware and infostealer attacks are exploding, while state-sponsored hacktivists—most recently from Iran’s supporters—are targeting American and international companies alike. We have seen the impact that such aggressive over-regulation can have in Europe, which is now essentially so far behind in tech development that it will never catch up and is entirely dependent on other countries. Producing more antitrust lawsuits than tech breakthroughs is not exactly the model we should be following.
For their part, Wiz knows perfectly well how rapidly evolving this sector is, which is exactly why they want to be acquired by Google. Their CEO, Assaf Rappaport, has been perfectly clear about what this would mean for his company: “Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: it will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a standalone company,” he wrote on his blog.
The evidence is clear here: Google isn’t buying Wiz to eliminate competition—they’re buying it to create some. In a market dominated by two players, adding a stronger third option helps everyone except the incumbents.
Unless the DOJ has other evidence of anticompetitive behavior on this front up their sleeve, they should stand aside and allow this acquisition to go through. At a time when every company is one breach away from disaster, blocking investments in cybersecurity is more than bad policy—it's playing Russian roulette with our digital infrastructure.
