Microsoft's 'good guy' approach frays in UK gaming battle
Microsoft’s charm offensive with the world’s governments is starting to lose some of its luster as the software giant is confronting its toughest antitrust scrutiny since co-founder Bill Gates was in charge
Microsoft's charm offensive with the world's governments is starting to lose some of its luster as the software giant is confronting its toughest antitrust scrutiny since co-founder Bill Gates was in charge.
Microsoft's policy chief responded by calling it a “bad day for Britain” that could make it an unattractive place to do business and warned Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government “it needs to look hard” at the role of its antitrust regulator.
“This decision, I have to say, is probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain," the company's president, Brad Smith, told BBC Radio 4. "It does more than shake our confidence in the future of the opportunity to grow a technology business in Britain than we’ve ever confronted before.”
The sharp tone marked a shift for Microsoft, and Smith in particular, who joined the company in 1993 and helped defend it from antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and Europe who targeted the company's personal computer software empire centered around the Windows operating system.
