A combined VMware and Broadcom almost certainly meets both thresholds with the virtualization giant’s core private cloud stack alone. The Authority’s call for input from interested parties therefore seems to be an opportunity for discussion of whether the deal will harm markets.

That may be a hard case to make in VMware’s core server virtualization market. While Virtzilla is often criticized for charging high prices, plenty of open source and proprietary alternatives are available.

As other regulators have considered the deal, Broadcom has run the argument that VMware’s multi-cloud management tools improve competitiveness of the cloud computing market, regardless of who owns them.

The overlap between VMware’s security portfolio and Broadcom’s products inherited from Symantec and CA could be represented as a nastier market concentration – although, again, alternatives are not hard to find.

If the Authority decides the Broadcom/VMware deal is indeed a “relevant merger situation”, a public interest test applies if the transaction is found to have implications for national security, financial stability, media plurality or to combat a public health emergency.

The Register cannot imagine the circumstances in which Broadcom buying VMware would meet those tests.

The Act does include allowances for intervention on cryptographic technology – but not the sort of stuff offered by either VMware or Broadcom.

Broadcom has described the probe as expected, unworrying, and unlikely to derail its ambition of closing the deal by late 2023.