Microsoft news recap: CMA provisional conclusion on Activision Blizzard deal, over 1 million sign up for ChatGPT-powered Bing, and more

Jack Wilkinson

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

The UK’s CMA provisionally concludes Activision deal could “damage competition”

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has released its provisional conclusion on Microsoft’s deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, and it’s not favourable on the deal, with the CMA saying that it could “damage competition”. The primary concern is around the deal making Microsoft stronger in the cloud gaming market, potentially stifling competition.

Microsoft’s Surface, Xbox, and HoloLens divisions affected by the planned layoffs

After announcing in January that the company would layoff 10,000 employees, it is now being reported that the layoffs at Microsoft will be spread across a number of divisions, with Surface, Xbox, and HoloLens all included in the planned layoffs.

Microsoft gets over 1 million sign ups for AI powered Bing preview in 48 hours

Following Microsoft opening up a waitlist for access to the new Bing, powered by ChatGPT, the company has announced that it has already had over 1 million sign up within 48 hours.

Microsoft Edge gets enhanced PDF experience with built-in Adobe Acrobat

A new PDF experience is arriving in Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and 11, as part of a partnership between Microsoft and Adobe to bring more of Adobe’s technologies to users in Microsoft’s ecosystem, starting with Adobe Acrobat powering the Microsoft Edge PDF experience.

That’s it for this week. We will be back next week with more Microsoft news.