Because the firm loves to be slapped on the wrist by the European Commission, Microsoft is imposing its OneDrive a little more on Windows users, under the guise of better protecting them against ransomware.
The question deserves to be asked: is Microsoft a masochistic company? It indeed seems – through its decisions and practices – to take great pleasure in being hit with record fines from the European Union. She already has a rich track record in this area. And has once again been officially accused of anti-competitive practices for its integration from 2016 to 2023 of Teams into its collaborative suite.
But Microsoft is not learning any lessons from this. The firm continues its detestable but mechanical and very Anglo-Saxon practice of “bundling” for each key service in its catalog. Next on the list of upcoming EU “investigations” will most likely be “OneDrive”. Because several European players have already complained about the excessive integration of OneDrive in Windows. Particularly in 2021 with an official complaint from Nextcloud and OVHcloud.
However, Microsoft gave the impression of starting to learn the lesson by announcing last year the possibility of easily uninstalling OneDrive for European Windows users. A decision made to comply with Microsoft’s DMA and GateKeeper DMA status.
Except that the publisher has just implemented a fairly radical change in Windows 11. Not only, as has been the case for years, OneDrive is installed by default, but Windows now seeks to automatically and systematically impose a backup of its key folders and those of the user on OneDrive. Failure to comply produces a security alert.
On paper, this looks like a side effect of its “Secure Future Initiative” and a desire to protect users by default against the harm of Ransomware by implementing good backup practice and relying on protection OneDrive anti-ransomware. On paper, it’s an excellent idea.
Except that in practice, it is also a roundabout way of imposing the use of OneDrive by default to protect Windows and data. And that’s “tying” as prohibited by European Union anti-trust rules. Especially since – when there is no bug when updating the system – this use of OneDrive for anti-ransomware protection is done without prior consent from the user. Some will necessarily see this as a deliberate desire on the part of the publisher to hold out the stick to be beaten. And, as a reminder, protecting itself behind the excuse of a fierce desire to protect users did not prevent Apple from being accused of violating the terms of the DMA with its App Store practices.
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