Microsoft Corporation, which gave British doctors free access to the Teams service during the coronavirus pandemic, may become involved in another antitrust investigation. According to local companies, these actions are anticompetitive and help to oust other players from the market. A check on this issue was initiated by the Minister of Enterprise, Energy and Industrial Strategy of Great Britain Kwasi Kwateng.
Image Source: Tawanda Razika / Pixabay
Microsoft made its Teams communications platform available to NHS employees free of charge in March this year. According to the available data, the service is used by about 1.2 million NHS employees. Plus, free use of Teams has saved the UK millions of pounds.
However, British companies working in this area saw Microsoft's move as an attempt to "take over" the healthcare sector. In their opinion, in the future, the American company will force the NHS to switch to using paid Teams services. This is due to the fact that during the pandemic, many NHS employees will get used to using the Microsoft platform and it will be difficult for them to abandon its use when the situation improves. However, other providers of alternative solutions will have already been pushed out of the market by then, so people will have virtually no other option but to continue using Teams with paid subscriptions.
Now, Microsoft's maneuver will be considered by local regulators at the initiative of the Minister of Enterprise, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In addition, the developer of the Teams rival service Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce for $ 28 billion in 2020, has filed a formal complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission. He believes that an American company is promoting its own product in violation of the principles of free competition, squeezing out rivals and monopolizing the market.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Your comment and facebook share will be appreciated