A coalition of companies of 'Software' and 'Cloud' of the European Union has joined a complaint filed by NextCloud against Microsoft in the European Commission, considering that the integration of applications such as ONEDRIVE and TEAMS in Windows operating systems is anti-competitive for The independent developers.
In recent years, technological giants such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon have increased their market share of 'software' as a service (SaaS, for its acronym in English) up to 66 percent in Europe, while local suppliers oscillate among the 26 and 16 percent.
The coalition has denounced that Microsoft integrates services such as OneDrive and Teams in its Windows operating system and with it "aggressively press consumers to register and deliver their data."
This practice, called "selfpreference", "limits the consumer's choice and creates a barrier for other companies that offer competitors", especially premises with specialized products, as reported by the reporter of the complaint.
This is included in a statement by the German company of 'software' Nextcloud, whose complaint against Microsoft, presented to the European Commission, 29 European companies and organizations in the sector have been addressed.
The situation with Microsoft 365 applications in Windows has been compared with Internet Explorer's integration in this operating system at the beginning of 2000, which negatively affected the development of other browsers and by which Microsoft was already fined in the European Union with 1,670 million euros until 2009.
"This type of behavior is bad for the consumer, for the market and, of course, for the EU local companies," said the executive director and founder of Nextcloud GmbH, Frank Karlitschek.
"Together with the other members of the coalition, we are asking the antitrust authorities in Europe to impose an equitable field, giving customers a free choice and fair opportunity for competition," Karlitschek added.
Date Of Update: 07 December 2021, 11:53
