"The outage lasted for about two days, and around the world, government agencies and businesses large and small ground to a halt. Without Office 365, Outlook and Teams, many organizations could not even convene a meeting or formulate a plan to deal with the outage.

All of this raises an important question: is Microsoft guilty of negligence, and, if so, what should be done about this? Here's my answer: yes, Microsoft is presumptively guilty of negligence, and any response to this must include antitrust breakups of the company.

Here's why I think that. Microsoft has demonstrably underinvested in its IT stability. Any IT plan that results in a global, multi-day outage is, by definition, inadequate. Whether the problem could have been solved by buying more servers, or hiring more people, or changing the management of key divisions is immaterial. Every one of these measures – every single measure that could have prevented this – costs money. By not spending that money, Microsoft definitively underinvested in its products.

But Microsoft doesn't lack for funds! Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and it has the margins to prove it. In 2025-2026, the company pissed away more than $30b in stock buybacks, a once-illegal (and still sleazy) form of stock manipulation. Over that same period, Microsoft lost nearly $200b on AI ventures that it now admits will not pay off:"

https://pluralistic.net/2026/11/13/outlookpocalypse/#bright-line-test

#Microsoft #Monopolies #Copyright #IP #CyberSecurity #Competition #Antitrust #AI