We support the complaint about this anti-competitive behavior and urge the EU to take action immediately. Big Tech's actions, based on their monopoly power in the operating system area, force consumers to use proprietary software, thus reducing their freedom and digital rights. Lothar Becker, the Document Foundation chairman, said, "European citizens should be able to decide by themselves about the digital tools they use to create, store and share contents, including an open document format for their files. These include the European DIGITAL SME Alliance the Document Foundation, LibreOffice's backing organization and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). Commission about Microsofts anti-competitive behavior in respect of its. Nextcloud is being joined in its complaint by several open-source, non-profit organizations. Nextcloud GmbH in respect of their formal complaint to the European. With its partners, it's also discussing filing a similar complaint in France. In addition, Nextcloud has also filed a request with the German antitrust authorities, the Bundeskartellamt, for an investigation against Microsoft. Nextcloud is doing this by filing an official complaint with this body. So, Nextcloud is asking the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition to prevent this kind of abusive behavior and keep the market competitive and fair for all players. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access.įrank Karlitschek, Nextloud's CEO and founder, goes so far as to say: Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant limits consumer choice and creates an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services.
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