He was referring to the bundling of Microsoft's products and the promotion of its own services within its own systems - concerns that prompted office messenger service Slack to file a complaint to the European Commission in 2020, over concerns that the company had been illegally tying its Teams software, which competes with Slack's own, with its "market-dominant Office productivity suite." The Commission is still evaluating the complaint. “Microsoft also engages in many of the same practices in the few areas where it has an entrenched position - in particular, how it uses Windows’ dominant position in PC operating systems to leverage into other markets,” said Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. Microsoft has tactfully managed to avoid the heavy antitrust fines of yesteryear - the last significant one being a €561 million slap on the wrist in 2013 for failing to follow previous competition orders, closing a 10-year period in which it had racked up €2.24 billion in EU antitrust penalties.īut practices are now emerging that hark back to the time when the company found itself in the EU's crosshairs, calling into question its straight-laced image. Abuse of market dominance is unfair and now that the abuse is slowly becoming visible, we as legislators will ensure that the cloaks no longer will work,” said Paul Tang, a left-wing Dutch member of the European Parliament. “Some companies have pretended for years to have cloaks of invisibility, but the spell has worn off.
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