On Tuesday, the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal announced that Microsoft would have to face a class-action lawsuit filed by nearly 60,000 UK businesses, and the case is now set to proceed to trial. The lawsuit, initiated by competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi, seeks damages amounting to £2.1 billion (equivalent to approximately RMB 19.4 billion).

The plaintiffs contend that Microsoft set lower licensing fees for Windows Server software on its Azure cloud platform compared to those charged by competitors such as Amazon AWS and Google Cloud. This, they argue, effectively imposed a "platform choice tax," with the extra costs ultimately passed on to enterprise customers.

Microsoft had sought to prevent the case from advancing to trial, asserting that the plaintiffs had not presented a feasible method for calculating damages. However, the court dismissed this argument, ruling that the case had a reasonable chance of success and allowing it to proceed as a class action.

Furthermore, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority determined that Microsoft's licensing practices had a significant negative impact on AWS and Google, thereby diminishing competition in the cloud services market. The US Federal Trade Commission is also investigating whether Microsoft has imposed punitive licensing terms in its productivity suites.

It remains to be seen whether the court will ultimately side with the plaintiffs' claims.