Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the morning of March 24, Beijing time, it is reported that before, European cloud computing service providers complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's monopoly on "operating system bundling its own cloud computing services." the European Commission is discussing whether to launch a formal antitrust investigation. One of the complainants, German software developer Nextcloud, said that Microsoft's response to the European Commission's antitrust complaint was not enough and that the company needed to make further adjustments.

Among the manufacturers that have filed antitrust complaints with the European Commission, French cloud computing service OVHcloud is also waiting for Microsoft to come up with a more specific solution, according to a person familiar with the matter.

If a settlement can be reached in private with the technology companies that filed the complaints, Microsoft can avoid a formal antitrust investigation by the European Commission. If the case is investigated and the antitrust charges are found out, the European Commission can issue a sky-high fine equivalent to 10% of Microsoft's total global revenue.

According to reports, in 2021, the German manufacturer Nextcloud took the lead in complaining about Microsoft's monopoly behavior to the European Commission, the European Commission, saying that Microsoft abused its dominant advantage in the computer operating system by bundling the network storage service OneDrive (one of Microsoft's cloud computing services) with Windows10 and Windows 11.

Microsoft has been a regular customer of the European Commission on antitrust issues. Over the past few decades, the European Commission has conducted a number of formal antitrust investigations and allegations against Microsoft (mainly about bundling of its own applications in the Windows operating system) and imposed huge fines of 1.6 billion euros ($1.7 billion).

On Wednesday (March 22), Nextcloud CEO Frank Karitshenko (Frank Karlitschek) told the press that Microsoft contacted Nextcloud about a year ago, but did not talk about the bundling of cloud computing services that the European technology industry is worried about.

Karitshenko said he hopes to have more talks with Microsoft, but it must be serious talks about the concerns of the industry.

It is reported that OVHcloud, Aruba, an Italian cloud computing service provider, and a Danish association representing the cloud computing industry are also among the manufacturers who have lodged complaints with the European Commission. The manufacturers' complaints mainly focus on some operating methods of Microsoft's cloud computing business and customer authorization agreements.

In October last year, Microsoft said it had made some changes to the cloud computing customer authorization agreement, which was a response to a complaint lodged by the EU cloud computing industry.

A spokesman for Microsoft said that Microsoft is very grateful for the fruitful talks with European service providers, which led to the adjustment of Microsoft's product policy, and Microsoft is also grateful for the feedback from European service providers.

At present, Aruba and the "Danish Cloud Computing Community" association have not made further comments.

In 2022, another industry association, the European Union of Cloud Computing Service providers, also filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft's cloud computing business. A spokesman for the association said that Microsoft contacted the association last week and expressed its willingness to negotiate and adjust some products and services.

It is worth mentioning that the members of the "European Cloud Computing Service providers Alliance" include Amazon, the absolute leader in the global cloud computing market.

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