In response to worries that Microsoft’s decision to include its Teams messaging and videoconferencing tool with its Office productivity software offers it an unfair advantage over rivals, the European Union announced on Thursday that it has launched an antitrust probe against the company.
The EU’s chief competition regulator, the European Commission, promised to conduct its in-depth probe “as a matter of priority.”
The probe is the result of a grievance made in 2020 by Slack Technologies, the company behind well-known office messaging software.
Owned by business software manufacturer Salesforce, Slack claimed that Microsoft was improperly integrating Teams with its Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, and Outlook, in breach of EU legislation, in order to eliminate competition.
For many firms in Europe, remote communication and collaboration platforms like Teams have become essential. Therefore, we must make sure that these items’ markets are competitive, according to Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust commissioner.
“For this reason, we are looking into whether Microsoft’s integration of its productivity suites with Teams may violate EU competition laws,” she continued.
In a statement, Microsoft expressed appreciation for “the European Commission’s work on this case.” The company further stated that it would “continue to cooperate with the commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.”
Only last week did the German video conferencing provider Alfaview add its own grievance against Microsoft Teams, claiming that the latter’s bundling practices give the American tech giant an unrivaled competitive advantage “that is not justified by performance and that competitors like Alfaview cannot match.”
According to the commission, starting the probe has no bearing on how it will turn out.
In order to increase oversight of Big Tech firms amid concerns that they have consolidated their dominance, Europe has taken the lead. But when Brussels examined Microsoft’s recent agreements, the firm won.
After Microsoft committed to automatically license well-known Activision games like “Call of Duty” for cloud gaming platforms, the EU approved Microsoft’s proposal to acquire video game developer Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
Additionally, Microsoft has received EU approval to acquire voice recognition business Nuance and video game developer Zenimax.
