Politicians and two sides of the Atlantic are debating stronger antitrust laws for Big Tech companies, and such laws are sorely needed, as evidenced by the banning of Tutanota email service users from Microsoft Teams.
Big tech companies have market power and can hurt smaller competitors with a few very easy steps, such as denying service to customers of smaller companies.
So until today, Microsoft blocks all Tutanota email addresses in Microsoft Teams. This severe anti-competitive practice forces Tutanota customers to register (if they don't have) a second email address – possibly from Microsoft itself – to create a Teams account.
This message appears when Tutanota customers try to create a Teams account:
When asked to change the current situation, a cfaceMicrosoft simply said that it was not possible for them to allow users to create Teams accounts with a Tutanota email address. Perfect.
“We tried repeatedly to solve it problem with Microsoft, but unfortunately our request was ignored", says Matthias Pfau, co-founder of Tutanota.
It's an example of how Microsoft can and does abuse its dominant market position to harm its competitors, which in turn harms consumers.
In recent years the demand for privacy has been constantly increasing. Big tech companies like Microsoft can't easily offer better privacy protections, as a large part of their business is based on revenue from targeted advertising – and that's why they have to track their users.
"We need to dismantle the power of Big Tech companies in the market. This will lead to a new development in today's online world to have products that focus on the benefit of the consumer – and not on maximizing ad revenue,” Pfau tells us.
“To get rid of online tracking, people need alternatives that respect privacy. However, competing with Microsoft is almost impossible, given its enormous market power."
