Image: Brian Smale and Microsoft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Microsoft could be next in the crosshairs of the UK’s new tech crackdown.

The country’s Competition and Markets Authority proposed designating Microsoft with “strategic market status” in business software — a first step toward intervening in how the company bundles Excel, Teams, and its Copilot AI assistant. The regulator points to around 20 million monthly UK users and high barriers to switching away from Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Microsoft pushed back, calling its products “open and interoperable.” A final decision is due by February, and Microsoft would become the third company brought under the UK’s new digital-markets regime, after Google and Apple. For millions of workers whose days run on Outlook, Teams, and Excel, any forced unbundling could eventually change what office software looks like — and what it costs.

Source: Reuters