Microsoft has been accused by the European Commission of violating competition rules by bundling its videoconferencing application Teams with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 office suites. In a Statement of Objections sent to Microsoft, the Commission stated that the company had used its dominant position in the software market to unfairly promote its own chat and videoconferencing tools over those of competitors.
The investigation was initiated in July 2023 after complaints from companies like Slack (now owned by Salesforce) and Alfaview. Teams was linked to popular applications like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook without any additional cost, giving customers no choice in whether they wanted access to Teams when they subscribed to these applications. Additionally, there were concerns about limitations on interoperability between Microsoft’s services and competitors of Teams.
Microsoft made changes to how Teams was distributed in response, but the Commission believes that these changes are not sufficient to address all competition concerns. This latest development in the investigation could potentially lead to hefty fines for Microsoft, which could amount to up to 10 percent of their global turnover. Microsoft will have the opportunity to respond to the allegations, but there is currently no deadline set for the completion of the investigation.
