Microsoft is once again in the sights of the European Commission. The latter suspects the American giant of anti-competitive practices in the context of the deployment of its Teams software.
According to Reuters, the American giant could have to undergo a full antitrust investigation. The EU has indeed in its crosshairs the Teams videoconferencing platform, whose integration within the Office suite could constitute a distortion of competition on the market.
Initially, a complaint from Slack
The main competitor of Teams, in this case, is Slack. The messaging application, owned by the Salesforce group, complained last year to the European Commission about the inclusion of its rival in the Office 365 suite. With nearly 345 million paid license users in the world, Microsoft’s office suite would give Teams an unfair advantage.
Slack has thus asked the European executive body to look into the matter and to oblige the American group to separate Teams from Office 365, so that the application is marketed as a single product. The Commission then sent a set of questionnaires to Microsoft in October 2021, to which were added new forms sent last month. According to Reuters, this would announce the imminence of an official investigation.
“ Commission examines interoperability [de Microsoft] and his way of grouping, but in more detail this time. She is looking for information that would allow her to define remedies “, explained a source of Reuters. A second witness confirms for his part that the institution ” prepares the ground for an investigation “.
Microsoft before the European Commission, a well-known scheme
With this new investigation about to start, two old acquaintances meet again. Microsoft has indeed been condemned several times since the beginning of the 2000s by the European authorities for abuse of a dominant position, for a cumulative amount of fines approaching 2 billion euros.
The firm founded by Bill Gates must also currently face another complaint filed in Brussels, against its OneDrive file storage service this time.
Sources: Reuters, Office 365, The echoes
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