Britain's competition watchdog on Monday said it was probing Google's $2.6 billion buyout of privately held big-data analytics firm Looker Data Sciences.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was considering whether the deal could hurt competition in the UK or other markets and invited comments on the acquisition until Dec. 20. 

Alphabet Inc-owned Google announced the cash deal in June, the first major acquisition for its new cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian. The deal would build upon Google Cloud's BigQuery, a tool for managing large datasets. 

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich) ((Pushkala.A@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter: @pushkala_a; within UK: +44 20 7542 1810, outside UK: +91 80 6749 6633;))