Microsoftfines & penalties

The Commission penalised Microsoft for charging unreasonable royalties for the interoperability information required by the 2004 decision. On appeal the penalty was trimmed to €860M.

The Commission fined Microsoft for breaking a legally binding commitment to show Windows users a browser-choice screen, which silently disappeared for roughly 15 million users. It was the first EU fine for breaching commitments.

In a landmark case, the Commission found that Microsoft abused its Windows dominance by bundling Media Player and withholding interoperability information from rival server-software makers.

The Irish DPC found that LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, processed members' personal data for behavioural advertising without a valid legal basis and without adequate transparency.

The Commission imposed a periodic penalty for Microsoft's failure to comply with the 2004 decision, specifically for not supplying complete interoperability information on reasonable terms.

The CNIL fined Microsoft for depositing advertising cookies on bing.com without consent and for making it harder to refuse cookies than to accept them.

Norway's Datatilsynet found that Xandr, the advertising technology company formerly called AppNexus and now owned by Microsoft, was a joint controller with Grindr when it relayed Norwegian Grindr users' data through real-time bidding between July 2018 and April 2020. The data revealed users' sexual orientation, which required explicit consent, and Xandr did not check that Grindr's consents were valid.