On Thursday 27 July, the European Commission announced the opening of a formal investigation into possible anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in the European Economic Area.
Slack Technologies, Inc. filed a complaint against Microsoft on 14 July 2020, accusing it of breaching European competition rules by linking the Teams communication tool to its range of productivity suites, which dominate the market in question.
Microsoft is integrating its Teams tool into its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 cloud productivity suites, which are very popular with subscribers.
The Commission is concerned that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the productivity software market and maintaining it by restricting competition in communication and collaboration tools.
In particular, it is concerned that Microsoft is giving its Teams tool a distribution advantage by not offering consumers a choice, when they take out a subscription to Office 365 or Microsoft 365, as to whether this communication tool is integrated into these two suites of programmes.
The Commission is also concerned that Microsoft is restricting interoperability between its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites and competing offerings.
In the Commission’s view, these practices may constitute anti-competitive tying or bundling. It will therefore verify whether Microsoft has in fact contravened European competition rules and, in particular, Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits the abuse of a dominant position within the internal market.
Link to case: https://aeur.eu/f/897 (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)