Italian watchdog probes Microsoft over 365 price hike concerns

Microsoft did not provide consumers with sufficient information to assess the changes, the watchdog said.

Italy’s competition watchdog launched an investigation into Microsoft to probe how it informed customers about a price hike for its Microsoft 365 services.

According to the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), Microsoft may have provided consumers information on price hikes in a “fragmented manner”, without making it “sufficiently clear” that the Microsoft 365 subscription service had been integrated with its Copilot and Designer AI services.

Consumers were also placed on a new, costlier plan by default, unless they explicitly withdrew, the watchdog said in a statement today (26 June).

In the AGCM’s view, Microsoft failed to provide consumers with sufficient information to assess the changes and, as a result, make informed decisions on if they wanted to renew their Microsoft 365 subscriptions or not.

This may be contrary to consumer rules, the AGCM said, and added that the manner of Microsoft’s communication “may also constitute an aggressive practice, as it appears to have unduly restricted consumers’ freedom of choice”.

Last September, Microsoft resolved a years-long EU investigation into 365 by tweaking how it provided the services in the region. The bloc probed whether the tech giant abused its dominant market power with its product-bundling.

The Commission preliminarily found that Microsoft restricted competition on the market for cloud-based communication and collaboration products. The company agreed to remedy the issue by unbundling services.

The EU, in a separate preliminary report yesterday (25 June), said that it was in favour of designating Microsoft’s cloud service Azure as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The law aims to regulate players in various digital markets by setting responsibilities and banning unfair practices.

Meanwhile, last week the Italian watchdog launched its second investigation into Apple in months, probing whether the tech giant met DMA obligations around service interoperability. It previously fined Apple nearly €100m over abusing its market dominance in the app distribution market.

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