European tech companies complain about Microsoft Onedrive to the EU

European tech companies complain about Microsoft Onedrive to the EU

A consortium of self-proclaimed European software and cloud companies Alliance for a level playing field, has recently sent a formal complaint to the European Commission about what they consider to be anti-competitive behavior by Microsoft in connection with the company’s Onedrive service.

The alliance was created at the initiative of the German cloud representative Nextcloud, which was created in Press release He writes that Microsoft is now repeating previous proprietary actions by bundling apps and services like Onedrive and Teams for Windows. The press release also states that Microsoft is serious about its attempts to get consumers to register and transfer their data to Microsoft services.

This limits consumers’ choices and creates a barrier for other companies offering competing services, Nextcloud writes.

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The company claims, without citing any source, that in just a few years, Microsoft managed to capture a 66 percent share of the European cloud storage market, while at the same time dropping the overall share of local providers from 26 to 16 percent. Nextcloud believes that Microsoft greatly favors its products and services, and that the company has a gatekeeper position that it is exploiting to win shares in more and more nearby markets, which according to Nextcloud means users are drawn deeper and deeper into Microsoft’s ecosystem.

The argument against this may be that Microsoft may offer functionality that competitors do not, but Nextcloud claims that Microsoft’s more niche competitors are uncompetitive because the key to success is not a good product, but the ability to destroy competition and block access.. in the market.

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As with Internet Explorer

This is similar to what Microsoft did when it killed competition in the browser market by discontinuing nearly all browser innovation for more than a decade, says Frank Karlicic, CEO and founder of Nextcloud.

Copy the product to an innovator, group it with your controlling product, stop its business, and then stop innovating. This form of behavior is harmful to consumers, the market and of course local businesses in the European Union. Together with other members of the alliance, we are asking competition authorities in Europe to impose equal competition terms, give customers freedom of choice and give competition a real chance, Karlicic continues.

With support from the alliance, which includes members such as The Document Foundation, Free Software Foundation Europe and more than 20 technology companies, Nextcloud has sent formal complaints about Microsoft’s practices to both the European Commission General Directorate of Competition the German competition authority, Bundeskartellamt.



Hanisi Anenih

Hanisi Anenih

"Web specialist. Lifelong zombie maven. Coffee ninja. Hipster-friendly analyst."

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