Microsoft Faces EU Antitrust Charge Over Teams

The European Commission has released the preliminary findings of its antitrust investigation into Microsoft. The investigation focused on Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with the productivity suites Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and found Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules.

The European Commission has provided Microsoft with its written Statement of Objections. Microsoft will now be able to review the documents of the investigation and can opt to reply in writing or request an oral hearing.

The European Commission opened a formal investigation in July 2023 in response to complaints first submitted by Slack Technologies in 2020, which alleged that Microsoft abused its market power by bundling the collaboration platform Teams with the rest of its productivity tools. A second complaint was submitted in July 2023 by the video conferencing service alfaview GmbH.

Microsoft first unbundled Teams from Office in Europe in October 2023 in an attempt to proactively respond to the investigation. It also aimed to improve the integration of competing collaboration software with Office 356 and Microsoft 365.

Microsoft went on to unbundle Teams from Office worldwide in April of this year to respond to further concerns about European companies that operate worldwide.

The preliminary findings of the European Commission’s investigation determine that Microsoft’s actions are “insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s conduct are necessary to restore competition.”

The press release for the investigation did not state why Microsoft’s recent actions are insufficient, but sources told Reuters that regulators want Microsoft to sell Office without Teams at a lower price.

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said: “Preserving competition for remote communication and collaboration tools is essential as it also fosters innovation on these markets. If confirmed, Microsoft’s conduct would be illegal under our competition rules. Microsoft now has the opportunity to reply to our concerns.”

The European Commission has not published a target date for the end of its investigation and has no legal requirement to do so. If the concerns raised by the European Commission cannot be resolved, Microsoft risks significant fines, up to 10% of its worldwide turnover, and will be required to follow any practices imposed by the European Commission.