Some 30 European software firms have united to take Microsoft, calling the US giant’s business practices anti-competitive.

The group, who have dubbed themselves a ‘coalition for a level playing field’ have specifically accused Microsoft of shutting out competitors by tightly integrating OneDrive and Teams with Windows.

On-premises collaboration vendor Nextcloud is the driving force behind the campaign and has filed complaints with European Commision and authorities in its native Germany. It is also considering a complaint in France.

Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud, said: “This kind of behaviour is bad for the consumer, for the market and, of course, for local businesses in the EU”

“This is quite similar to what Microsoft did when it killed competition in the browser market, stopping nearly all browser innovation for over a decade. Copy an innovators’ product, bundle it with your own dominant product and kill their business, then stop innovating”

“Together with the other members of the coalition, we are asking the antitrust authorities in Europe to enforce a level playing field, giving customers a free choice and to give competition a fair chance.”

The coalition claims that Microsoft is “aggressively pushing” users of Windows to sign up to its other subscription services, making it more difficult for competitors to get a foothold in the market.

It accused Microsoft of both favouring its own products and acting as gatekeeper to prevent competitors accessing the Windows client base.

The group of software vendors are making two demands of the EU:

  • No gate keeping (by bundling, pre-installing or pushing Microsoft services) for a level playing field
  • Open standards and interoperability that make an easy migration possible. This gives consumers a free choice

This is not the first time Microsoft has been accused of anticompetitive behaviour over recent months.

In October, it was reported that the EU was probing the vendor by sending out a questionnaire to its rivals.

The questionnaire was thought to be a response to complaints made by Slack at how Microsoft bundles Teams in for free with its Office 365 portfolio.

Microsoft has not commented on the coalition’s actions.

 

 



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