Photo Credit:Associated Press
The German Federal Cartel Office announced on Monday that it has intensified its scrutiny of Microsoft, the American tech giant, to investigate potential abuses of its dominant market position.
The Federal Cartel Office said it had determined Microsoft was of paramount significance for competition across markets, a move that would allow the watchdog to take action and prohibit anti-competitive practices. Microsoft joins Apple, Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet, and Meta in falling under reinforced monitoring made possible by the German Competition Act, which came into force in 2021.
The act allows the watchdog, known in German as the Bundeskartellamt, to intervene earlier, particularly against the world's tech giants.Microsoft's many products are omnipresent in companies, authorities and private households and have become indispensable, Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt said in a statement. The company has had a dominant position with its Windows operating system for many years now, he said, and has established a very strong presence for its Office products and other software.
Microsoft has also significantly grown its Azure cloud platform and is increasingly using artificial intelligence, including through its Copilot AI assistant and partnerships such as the tie-up with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Today Microsoft's ecosystem is stronger and more closely interconnected than ever before, Mundt said. Microsoft's financial strength and wide reach have also allowed it to quickly build up strong positions in new markets, the statement added, citing video and messaging app Teams, the Xbox gaming console and professional networking platform LinkedIn as examples.
The watchdog stressed that its latest decision applies to Microsoft as a whole, not only to individual services or products. In a response, Microsoft said it recognised its responsibility to support a healthy competitive environment.
Big tech companies have been facing increasing scrutiny around the globe inrecent years over their dominant positions as well as their tax practices.
