BRUSSELS, July 27 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Thursday found itself the target of an EU antitrust investigation over the tying of its chat and video app Teams with its Office product, putting it at risk of a hefty fine.
The U.S. tech giant has racked up 2.2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in EU antitrust fines in the previous decade for practices in breach of EU competition rules, including tying or bundling two or more products together.
It has since then sought adopted a more conciliatory approach with the European Commission.
The European Commission’s investigation followed a complaint by Salesforce-owned (CRM.N) workspace messaging app Slack in 2020 and after the U.S. tech giant’s offer of remedies failed to address the EU competition enforcer’s concerns.
The EU competition enforcer said it was concerned that Microsoft may be abusing and defending its market position in productivity software by restricting competition in the European communication and collaboration products market.
“Remote communication and collaboration tools like Teams have become indispensable for many businesses in Europe. We must therefore ensure that the markets for these products remain competitive, and companies are free to choose the products that best meet their needs,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said Microsoft would continue to co-operate with the European Commission and that the company remained committed to finding solutions to address the Commission’s concerns.
Reuters reported earlier this month that the EU antitrust watchdog was set to open a probe after Microsoft declined to offer bigger price cuts on its Office without Teams.
The European Commission hopes a price differential between Office with Teams and Office without the app will ensure a level playing field with rivals and give consumers more choice, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.
German rival alfaview last week filed a complaint similar to Slack’s with the EU executive.
this is absolutely justified. my company switched from Slack (which we all largely enjoyed using) to the bundled Teams (which causes problems all day every day for everyone) solely because they were already paying for Office and Teams was free.
on the other hand, i can’t imagine how much money we’re losing from the lost productivity…
I keep hearing this but my company uses teams and I rarely if ever have any issues. Could it just be a configuration thing?
I just read about it in the news since I no longer use Teams. But having used it in the past and then have switched to a Slack+Zoom combination. My god. It’s just on another level. Having two products that each focus on one thing and try to make it great kinda works.
Anecdotally Slack has it’s fair share of issues once in a while. Zoom barely ever.
I hope this makes Microsoft unbundle Teams from Office. It’s ridiculous how much of a market advantage this has given Teams and it’s nowhere near worthy of it.
Isn’t the argument the other way around? No one would pay for this shit, so we have to bundle it with our better products.
That’s kinda like saying we should make phone makers stop bundling chargers because it damages the charger industry…
Funny, I do remember thinking yesterday that having teams installed by default is basically Internet explorer all over again. On the other hand, from what I’ve seen I don’t think most companies really care and that they would install teams anyway. The integration with the rest of Microsoft is really convenient from a business perspective. My work uses it, and teams is scary efficient at scheduling meetings. Far better than zoom.
Half of every morning meeting is trying to work out wtf is happening with teams in my experience.
A frequent occurrence is when it, without warning, changes your text to right-to-left Arabic layout, so every now and again you get a message from a colleague that reads like they’re trapped in the black lodge
I also had a moment yesterday when pop up messages took over almost my entire screen and I had to force quit teams. If anyone used to get pop up spammed back on MSN Messenger twenty years back it was just like that.
Teams is absolute fucking shite.
I remember when it was all about browsers and internet explorer. pretty sure they had to give you an option as to which browser you wanted in the setup. weird you don’t have to do that anymore and the only option is edge…
Why are they targeting microsoft when google is the more dangerous one at the moment.
How is Google more dangerous. I think you might have a wrong impression based on the current flood of news articles, because the web drm thingy is the current hot topic. Don’t get me wrong. There should be a spot light on it. But Microsoft is still playing a whole different ball game overall.
Google’s android OS has more market share than Microssoft. do you think that all the privacy apps out there protect us from google’s prying eyes? even if you install every privacy app you have on your android device, the underlying OS is still google and only rooting or totally not using an android device is the option to secure your mobile activity from google’s spying.
and all of these android device has GMAIL, CHrome and every google proprietary app installed on them from the beginning. Microsoft was brought to court just for internet explorer for inticompetitive issues, but goole gets away with it with not just chrome but every google app pre installed on any android device.
so do not downplay the danger of google.
I wasn’t talking about that and I’m unsure why you are making this about privacy. The topic was about market share and seizing control of certain markets. Microsoft is a really big player in that game and Google ist irrelevant in comparison.
This isn’t about just web browsers. Yes. Google is a step ahead in that field. And ten steps behind in most others.
What I was trying to convey to you is: Don’t downplay Microsoft just because Google is currently a relevant topic in one corner of it.
Yes. That’s important to. No that doesn’t mean they are playing in the same league.
Hopefully they do both, but I agree
@Black_Gulaman @soyagi, at the moment, but M$ isn’t much better anyway, both are userdata hogs, like also Amazon and Meta, because of permissive or even inexistent privacy laws in the USA.
yeah I do agree, I should have written “why do they keep focusing on microsoft while there are other institutions doing the same, such as google which is currently more dangerous”
but i was typing as an emotional reflex so what came out is short and did not represent my thoughts properly.
Cost of doing business.
EU antitrust tends not to be that. They do have serious fines unlike the US.
2.2 billion euros in a decade. Doesn’t feel like too much.
There is usually an expectation that the offender ceases to offend as well, which is the important part.
