MarketWatch specialists indicate that Microsoft could be in for some serious antitrust trouble in 2022 — especially in Europe. Microsoft itself isn’t impressed by the threat, as illustrated by a recent internal memo.
MarketWatch experts argue that Microsoft has managed to avoid major antitrust cases in the past twenty years. Its market dominance and ability to create market roadblocks were once motives for cracking down on the tech giant, but later proved to be overblown. As a result, MarketWatch says, the tech giant has been dealt with more leniently than direct competitors such as Google, Apple and Facebook.
Possible pressure and fines from Europe
The experts note that the latter is especially true in the United States — not abroad. It is precisely abroad, and the European Union in particular, where the tech giant can get in trouble in the coming year.
EU antitrust investigations should become increasingly intensive and important. Currently, a competition complaint by open-source cloud company Nextcloud is being processed in the EU. Allegedly, Microsoft violated competition rules by bundling Microsoft Teams and OneDrive in Windows 11.
Indifference
For the time being, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be losing sleep over antitrust actions and investigations. MarketWatch acquired an internal Microsoft memo from June of this year. In the memo, the tech giant indicates that increasing pressure from competition authorities is to be expected, and probably won’t cause too many problems.
The tech giant says it has been able to adapt to laws and regulations over the past two decades and doesn’t see a reason to doubt its capability at this time. As such, the organization seems to indifferently continue to do what it wants; deliver solutions and applications to its customers.
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