Germany's antitrust watchdog, the Bundeskartellamt, announced on March 28, 2023 that it is launching an investigation into Microsoft's actions. The German competition watchdog will try to find out whether the American technology giant has "a primary importance on competition across markets".
After having conducted several investigations on the actions of multiple tech giants, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta or recently PayPal, the Bundeskartellamt is now interested in Microsoft. The launch of this close surveillance procedure is based on the powers received by the German competition authority thanks to a law enacted in 2021. This legislative framework gives it the right to be particularly attentive to the every move of the Net giants considered suspicious.
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"With Windows and Office products, Microsoft traditionally has a very strong position in operating systems and office software," commented the agency's chairman, Andreas Mundt, in a statement. |
According to the regulator, the tech giant has used its flagship tools to expand its product line with OneDrive, Teams, its teambuilding and video conferencing software, and Microsoft Azure, its cloud services. These products are usually connected to other Microsoft applications, which does not necessarily please the Bundeskartellamt.
In addition to these generally cloud- and office-related services, Microsoft is also active in other areas. It owns the social network LinkedIn as well as the search engine Bing.
The latter has been redesigned using the generative AI offered by OpenAI, ChatGPT thanks to a partnership that Satya Nadella's company has with this company. This addition has allowed it to pass the symbolic mark of 100 million daily active users.
Similarly, Microsoft's gaming arm has been trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $67 billion for over a year. Several regulators, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), as well as the European Commission, have all launched an investigation to find out if this acquisition would affect competition in the video game market.
All these activities would, according to the Bundeskartellamt, provide good reasons to examine whether Microsoft is of primary importance in various markets, in order to identify and prohibit any anti-competitive behavior at an early stage, says Adreas Mundt.
