(Reuters) – EU’s antitrust regulator is taking a deeper look into Microsoft Corp’s $16 billion deal for transcription expertise firm Nuance Communications Inc, asking prospects and opponents to attract up a listing of issues, based on a questionnaire from final month seen by Reuters.
The beforehand unreported outreach is probably the most intensive by an antitrust authority because the firms introduced the acquisition in April, based on an individual aware of the matter.
Microsoft declined to remark, and Nuance didn’t reply to a request for remark.
After minimal assessment, the U.S. Department of Justice in June and the Australian Competition Commission in October stated they might not contest the deal. The firms filed for approval from the European Commission’s competitors bureau final month, and the regulator has till Dec. 21 to clear the deal or open a much bigger investigation.
The firms had anticipated to shut the deal by the tip of this 12 months, however stated final month the timeline may slip to early subsequent 12 months.
The questionnaire asks whether or not Microsoft and Nuance are opponents and whether or not a tie-up may have an effect on purchasers and rivals, together with whether or not Microsoft may favor Nuance over competing companies.
Nuance primarily sells transcription expertise that’s widespread amongst medical doctors and name facilities that need to automate note-talking. Analysts view the deal as bolstering Microsoft’s presence within the healthcare market, and bringing it new voice and medical knowledge to coach synthetic intelligence choices in well being, speech and biometric safety.
Like different large tech firms, Microsoft for years has grown its enterprise by acquisitions, corresponding to in promoting and video gaming. But within the final decade, Microsoft has averted the goal that lately has dogged its opponents Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc, all of that are dealing with antitrust lawsuits and investigations on quite a few points.
Steven Weber, a University of California Berkeley professor finding out the intersection of expertise and well being care, stated attainable issues concerning the pending deal may embrace Microsoft forcing its Office suite on Nuance prospects by bundling them collectively.
Nuance has stated it serves 77% of U.S. hospitals.
A key to its success has been has making certain in offers with prospects that it may use their knowledge to advance its voice recognition techniques, based on former chief government Paul Ricci and one other former worker.
For occasion, a Nuance contract with Augusta University Medical Center, obtained by Reuters this 12 months by a public information request, reads, “Customer shall present Nuance entry to voice and textual content knowledge…and grants Nuance a perpetual, royalty-free license to repeat, use and analyze such knowledge for speech recognition analysis.”
Big cloud distributors corresponding to Amazon and Microsoft sometimes wouldn’t have unfettered entry to prospects’ knowledge for analysis and improvement. But the chance to accumulate these relationships and knowledge explains Microsoft’s curiosity in Nuance, the previous workers stated.
Other suppliers of well being transcription applied sciences embrace 3M Co and Philips.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Kenneth Li and David Gregorio)
