Europe moves against Booking.com and Microsoft

Under the Digital Markets Act, the EU reserves the right to designate a company as a ‘gatekeeper’, meaning it’s one of the most significant digital conduits between businesses and consumers. In many ways, Booking.com could be considered the Amazon of accommodation, be it hotels or self-catering. The company now has six months to comply with the terms of the DMA, or else. In the same bulletin the EC announced it’s still thinking about designating X (Twitter) as a gatekeeper.

“Today’s good news is holidaymakers will start benefiting from more choice and hotels will have more business opportunities,” said Margrethe Vestager, EVP in charge of competition policy. “Following our decision Booking.com joins the list of core platform services required to adhere to DMA rules.”

“Booking is an important player in the European tourism ecosystem and is now also a designated gatekeeper,” said Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market. “We will work to make sure it will fully comply with the DMA obligations within six months. The DMA proves again to be a powerful but flexible tool to identify and regulate companies that are real gatekeepers.”

Meanwhile, the FT reports that the EU is set to make antitrust charges against Microsoft regarding it’s potential domination of the videoconferencing market thanks to bundling Teams with Office. While Microsoft has apparently offered some remedies to placate the EU, there remain concerns it could do sneaky things like optimise the performance of Teams on Windows, as well as make it more compatible with things like Outlook.

The EU first started investigating potential antitrust activity around Teams when Slack made a formal complaint back in 2020. There can be little doubt that products such as Teams, as well as nascent AI tool Copilot, receive significantly enhanced prominence through other Microsoft near-monopolies such as Outlook. And the EU has a long history of taking similar action against Microsoft, going all the way back to Internet Explorer.