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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Nextcloud and almost 30 other European companies have filed a complaint about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior with its OneDrive cloud storage offering.
[...] Now, with a coalition of other European Union (EU) software and cloud organizations and companies called the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field," Nextcloud has formally complained to the European Commission (EC) about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior by aggressively bundling its OneDrive cloud, Teams, and other services with Windows 10 and 11.
Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant is limiting consumer choice and creating an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services.
Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits, but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law.
Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access.
Frank Karlitschek, Nextloud's CEO and founder, goes so far as to say:
This is quite similar to what Microsoft did when it killed the competition in the browser market, stopping nearly all browser innovations for over a decade. Copy an innovators' product, bundle it with your own dominant product, and kill their business, then stop innovating. This kind of behavior is bad for the consumer, for the market, and, of course, for local businesses in the EU. 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 giving the competition a fair chance.
[...] Will this effort come to anything? Stay tuned. The EC, has in the past, as Google can attest, rule that American companies have engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the EU.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday November 29 2021, @01:44PM
There's no need to stoop to sending traffic to M$ ZDNet. It was great decades ago, but recent years show it to only be filled with puff pieces written by M$ shills which spin each and every topic in M$ favor and against its competitors (i.e. everything else). Even though there are only a tiny fraction of sites, and journalists, out there as compared to years past, there are many other less disreputable sources out there. One would be PCMag which has an article titled, Nextcloud Asks EU to Stop Microsoft From Bundling OneDrive With Windows [pcmag.com] and Politico covers it as, Microsoft targeted in antitrust complaint to EU over OneDrive [politico.eu].
Though, if ZDNet is really going to be quoted in the fine summary, at least balance it with a statement from NextCloud itself: EU tech sector fights for a Level Playing Field with Microsoft [nextcloud.com].
Not surprisingly the German language sites picked up the news long ago and provide a more neutral perspective than the English language ones which are fully beholden to M$ and its partners for advertising money.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.