A coalition of software and cloud companies has filed a complaint with the European Commission (EC) against Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior in bundling its OneDrive cloud storage, computers and other services with Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The level playing field Coalition includes several European Union (EU) based companies led by open source hosted cloud storage provider Nextcloud.
“It's pretty similar to what Microsoft did when it killed competition in the browser market, stopping almost all browser innovation for over a decade. Copy an innovator's product, combine it with your own dominant product and kill your company, then stop innovating,” says Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud.
Arguing that Microsoft's behavior is bad for consumers, the coalition called on the EC to level the playing field for all players and ensure that Microsoft does not exploit its dominant market position in the operating systems industry to oust to the competition in other segments.
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In addition to Nextcloud, the coalition includes several leading non-profit and open source organizations, such as the European DIGITAL SME Alliance, the Document Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
On its home page, the coalition suggests that big-tech anti-competitive behavior not only kills competition, but by doing so hurts consumers and businesses.
"Microsoft is integrating 365 ever deeper into its portfolio of services and software, including Windows. OneDrive is taking hold where users deal with file storage and Teams is a default part of Windows 11. This makes it almost impossible to compete with its SaaS services,” the coalition argues.
To clarify the point, he argues that while Microsoft, Google and Amazon have increased their market share to 66% in the EU, the share of local providers has dropped from 26% to 16%.
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