Germany recognises Microsoft as tech giant

3 years after a formal antitrust complaint by Nextcloud and 30 other European tech companies the German antitrust authorities („Bundeskartellamt“) have announced that Microsoft is now „subject to extended abuse control“ as they are determined to be of „paramount significance across markets“. The good news, quoting their announcement:

Based on this provision, the Bundeskartellamt can prohibit companies which have such positions of power from engaging in anti-competitive practices.

As you might be aware, in 2021 we assembled a coalition of like minded European tech companies and filed a complaint with the European Commission’s antitrust authorities. There has been virtually no movement on that for years. We also filed a complaint with the German antitrust authority, which in 2023 announced the start of an investigation to determine if Microsoft might have a lot of market power. After a year and a half, they are now at that point. An investigation thus has not been started, but the doors are open for them to look into the actual behaviour of the tech giant from Redmond.

3 years of more anticompetitive behaviour from Microsoft

In the mean time, Microsoft has increased its anti-competitive behaviour. The company proceeded with integrating OneDrive deeper into Windows and making it harder to use Windows without OneDrive account. It also blocked attempts by Nextcloud to gain access to interoperability API’s that would allow Nextcloud users to save files to Nextcloud from Microsoft Office apps. And it accidentally uploaded user files to OneDrive even if those users didn’t want it to do that.

The European Commission has made little progress on the complaint we filed. Interestingly, a later complaint by another American big tech firm, Salesforce (Slack) about Teams bundling with Microsoft 365 did result in a relatively prompt investigation.

Quoting our CEO and founder, Frank, from our press release:

„Over the past three years, Nextcloud has submitted extensive documentation and other evidence of anti-competitive behavior by Microsoft. The Federal Cartel Office today determined that Microsoft has particular market power. This is an important step to prohibit future anti-competitive practices by the US company.

This is an important step forward, and we look forward to an investigation.