UK begins antitrust inquiry into Microsoft's business software ecosystem

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is taking a closer look at Microsoft’s business software empire, launching a strategic market status investigation into the company’s ecosystem. The probe, which is the fourth since the UK's digital markets competition regime came into force last year, will determine whether …

[elsergiovolador]

CMA

> Clown Markets Authority (CMA) is taking a closer look

Or taking a piss? Hard to tell.

[dmesg]

IT vendors trying to lock in customers? Heavens! Bring the smelling salts!

Microsoft abusing its desktop dominance? Say it isn't so, Satya!

[I could be a dog really]

We all "know" what the answer is, Microsoft have spent decades engineering vendor lock-in and competition lock-out. Of course, the big problem is that there's a big difference between "knowing" it, and having enough evidence to stand up in court.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a quote for £1000 setup + £1500 per annum for Microsoft 365, that Microsoft have insisted is necessary for us to use the £2000 per annum AI service we bought last year.

That quote does not include support.

The only part of MS365 we would use is email.

Our current email supplier costs £40 a year, is UK/EU so has no exposure to the US CLOUD Act, and includes support.

If that's not clear evidence of market abuse, I don't know what is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exchange Online Plan 1 cost £4 per user per month, so for £1500 per annum cost you must have about 35 users in your company

[Anonymous Coward]

MS pulled their free charitable 365 offering (E3 ish) last year and told the charities they'd now be paying for it.

They left them E1 with all the shit online only versions.

The charity my Mrs was volunteering with had to kill the projects they had which were goign to set up a load of automations for them (they were getting voluntary dev support as well).

All to skim a little bit more cash from a sector with no profits anyway.

(yes yes I know the OSS arguments but that just wasn't going to happen)

[Caver_Dave]

Charity

Yes, in the same boat.

Our one paid member of staff performs outreach work and so we now have to pay so that she can continue to use the laptop when out of the office.

The volunteers (including me as the IT admin) have to use the online versions as we cannot afford to do otherwise.

As a small charity we would not get volunteers to use the online tools unless they were "Microsoft that we learnt at school."

[rg287]

Re: Charity

As a small charity we would not get volunteers to use the online tools unless they were "Microsoft that we learnt at school."

Have an OnlyOffice instance ready to go. Next time Microsoft change M365 (again), switch over and say "Oh yeah, this is what it looks like now. Blame MS. I know, it's so annoying how they just keep changing stuff".

Only half joking.

[IGotOut]

Checks calendar....

...I'm confused, is it 1996 or 2026?

[alain williams]

The horse has left the barn

The door should have been closed decades ago.

[capnkirk]

Doesn't Oracle also do this?

I recall Oracle licensing favoured running Oracle RDBMS on OCI compared to other clouds. My knowledge might be a bit outdated but this was from the time when Thomas Kurian (now Google Cloud CEO) was at Oracle. My point is this isn't just something Microsoft does.

[vordan]

This is so sudden ...

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ?

Because when the CMA give MS a clean bill of health (which they will do) MS then has the power of the UK state to help it lock out other vendors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me an old cynic

This is just Starmer worming up to the EU again. If the CMA breaks it's "No Conflict of Interest" mantra for the first time ever, it will only be a part of the political snuggle-up. Once the EU-Happy box is ticked, the business implications will be quietly brushed under the Whitehall carpets.

[Lee D]

Word

Guarantee you that the final report is in Word format because that's the only format that they have the software to make.