> I think the popularity dropped after the takeover in Europe

It wasn't the takeover, it was splitting SUSE linux into a paid stable/supported distro and a testing/community distro, like Red Hat had just done with RHEL/Fedora. Unlike Red Hat, SUSE didn't have the critical mass to force the community to be guinea pigs for paid customers, and it withered as folk switched to other distros, including the hot new entrant: ubuntu.