When a private giant imposes its rules on the Swiss economy, it's no longer a simple technological debate - it's a problem of sovereignty. By driving up the price of its licences without any tangible improvement in services, while locking businesses and public authorities into a model of perpetual dependence, Microsoft is revealing a drift that has become impossible to ignore. The opening of an investigation by the Competition Commission is not a technical detail: it is the official admission that a systemic abuse may be underway. And Switzerland can no longer turn a blind eye.
The news is significant: the Competition Commission opens a preliminary investigation against Microsoft for «very sharp» increases in the price of its licences in Switzerland.
This is not an isolated incident. It is the logical outcome of a strategy that has been in place for years.
The real scandal: the end of ownership, the reign of rent
Microsoft has gradually imposed a compulsory annual licences, coupled with virtualised solutions.
The result: more choice, more control, more ways out for customers - businesses, SMEs, cantonal or parastatal administrations.
We don't has plus software.
We leases indefinitely a right of use, at an increasing price, on pain of losing access to its own work tools.
Paying more, for what exactly?
The COMCO says it clearly: if margins increase without any improvement in services, this may be a case of abuse.
But let's be serious:
- Office automation tools virtually unchanged for years.
- Innovation’ is mainly used as a marketing pretext for lock more the ecosystem.
- The forced addition of modules such as Copilot is being used as an alibi for increases of up to up to +17 %, sometimes +33 % depending on the offer.
This is a captive annuity, not technological progress.
Billions captured, with no real alternative
With more than 430 million users of Microsoft 365, each price increase generates additional billion, with no effective competition in the short term.
Public administrations - dependent, standardised, trapped - pay full price, with taxpayers' money.
This is precisely what we call a dominant position.
What Switzerland must demand
It's time to move on from indignation to political action. In concrete terms:
- Abolish compulsory annual licences
- Reinstate software purchases, as before
- Impose a 15-year operating obligation on the operating system concerned
- Let the customer decide whether or not to upgrade to a new version
- Parliamentary intervention to regulate these practices by law
- Taking Microsoft out of federal administration
- Recommend that the cantons break with this dependence from a sprawling, predatory multinational
Digital sovereignty or organised submission
Switzerland cannot advocate competition, innovation and fiscal responsibility while at the same time accepting a structural dependence to a player who dictates its prices, rules and timetable.
The COMCO investigation is a first signal.
It must be followed by a clear political choice.
Digital sovereignty is not a slogan.
It's a decision.
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