Microsoft Faces EU Antitrust Investigation Over Unfair Competition Concerns with Teams and Office Software Bundling

The European Union (EU) has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft Corp MSFT for alleged abuse of its dominant position by bundling its Teams videoconferencing app with its Office productivity software. 

The European Commission is investigating whether Microsoft abuses its power by prohibiting customers from choosing a Teams competitor when subscribing to its productivity software. Microsoft is also allegedly restricting interoperability between its productivity suites and other products that compete with Teams.

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It marks the first formal EU probe of Microsoft in over a decade, the Wall Street Journal reports.

A 2020 complaint by Salesforce, Inc CRM Slack Technologies, which alleged that Microsoft was forcing companies to install Teams and blocking its removal, triggered the probe. Recently, German videoconferencing company Alfaview filed a similar complaint.

In Europe, Microsoft faced €2.2 billion in fines between 2004 - 2013 due to antitrust complaints.

Workplace collaboration software like Teams and Slack gained traction during the pandemic when the world migrated towards remote work. Teams boast over 300 million monthly active users.

Microsoft said it respects the European Commission's work and is committed to finding solutions to address their concerns. At the same time, the commission has not received satisfactory commitments from Microsoft to resolve the issues at this stage.

Microsoft had initially attempted to address competition concerns by agreeing to stop automatically installing Teams on customers' devices.

Political pressure against Microsoft has been mounting, with MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin calling on the commission to enforce concessions. She flagged that Teams had amassed about 270 million users while Slack had about 20 million. 

Price Action: MSFT shares traded lower by 1.39% at $333.06 on the last check Thursday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.