Microsoft is under fire in the EU again, this time regarding Entra ID and 365

Microsoft had its share of trouble with the EU recently, but it seems that the company isn’t out of the woods yet.

The EU is currently looking into Entra ID and 365 services after claims of anticompetitive practices.  

Microsoft is under the spotlight by the EU, yet again

As TechRadar writes, Microsoft is being investigated by the EU antitrust regulators as Amit Zavery, VP/GM and Head of Platform for Google Cloud claims.

Microsoft is accused of forcing users to use Entra ID to access Microsoft services. Zavery claims that Microsoft can remove interfaces and APIs thus preventing users from using other authentication methods.

That’s not all, system administrators familiar with Microsoft’s ecosystem claim that Entra ID is the primary method for accessing Microsoft 365, thus raising concerns.

One system administrator claimed the following:

As soon as you create a 365 tenancy, it also creates an Entra ID as your ID, they are intrinsically linked.

Microsoft also released a statement regarding this probe:

Like other cloud SaaS services, Microsoft has built-in identity capabilities which ensure our customers can securely access our cloud services. We also provide open APIs, enabling seamless integration with third-party identity services like Ping and Okta as well as with security providers to allow our customers to choose the solution that best fits their needs.

As we said earlier, this isn’t the first time that the EU and Microsoft have clashed regarding unfair business practices.

Microsoft had to comply and it now allows you to remove Edge and Bing from Windows. As for this probe, we’ll just have to wait for the official results from the EU.