European antitrust authorities are looking into Microsoft over Teams

The European Commission announced this week that authorities in Europe are looking into Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Teams software with Office 365 to assess if it is anti-competitive. The EU investigation comes in response to a formal complaint filed by Slack, a Microsoft competitor owned by Salesforce. This was filed in 2020, alleging that Microsoft had improperly hampered competition.

The Commission claimed that by bundling Teams with its “well-entrenched” productivity package, which includes programmes like Word and Microsoft, Outlook, Microsoft may be preventing users from using competing collaboration applications. Interoperability problems between Microsoft’s software and third-party solutions also worry antitrust officials, it was added.

Microsoft stated in a statement that it is helping with the investigation. While a spokesperson on behalf of the Eu said that first, we must determine whether there is a violation of antitrust laws.

The extensive inquiry underscores increased EU antitrust monitoring for Microsoft, which was recently penalised in 2013 for violating a contract to allow European consumers a choice of online browsers.