Microsoft ‘Likely’ to Face EU Probe into Teams

Microsoft is likely to face a European Union (EU) anti-trust investigation as regulators raise their scrutiny of the technology company, according to Reuters.

In October 2021, the EU’s anti-trust regulators sent out questionnaires to Microsoft’s rivals to deem whether Microsoft bundling Teams into office as a free product has given it an unfair advantage following a complaint by Slack.

At the time, Reuters said that the survey focused on the years between 2016 and 2021.

It is now understood that the EU Commission sent out another round of questionnaires last month as a follow-up to last year.

Reuters’ sources suggest this is a sign that the EU is preparing to go ahead with a formal investigation.

Slack first argued to the EU in July 2020, where the company accused Microsoft of “crushing competition” and “illegally abusing” its position within the software market.

Slack claims that Microsoft force installs its Teams platform on user devices and makes it difficult to remove due to the tying of the Teams collaboration product to the market-dominant Office productivity suite.

Slack, which was acquired by Salesforce last year, believes that by allegedly carrying out the above practices, Microsoft is in breach of European Union laws about fair competition.

The collaboration company isn’t the only one that has called on the EU to launch an investigation into Microsoft.

In November 2021, around 30 European software firms united to take on Microsoft, again calling the US giant’s business practices anti-competitive.

The group dubbed themselves a ‘coalition for a level playing field’ and specifically accused Microsoft of shutting out competitors by tightly integrating OneDrive and Teams with Windows.

German collaboration vendor Nextcloud was the driving force behind the campaign and filed complaints with the EU and in its native country.

Commenting in November 2021, Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud, said: “This kind of behaviour is bad for the consumer, for the market and, of course, for local businesses in the EU.”

“This is quite similar to what Microsoft did when it killed competition in the browser market, stopping nearly all browser innovation for over a decade. Copy an innovators’ product, bundle it with your own dominant product and kill their business, then stop innovating”

“Together with the other members of the coalition, we are asking the anti-trust authorities in Europe to enforce a level playing field, giving customers a free choice and to give competition a fair chance.”

The French Minister of National Education has recently confirmed that using Office 365 and Google Workspace in schools is prohibited. 

Pap Ndiaye, Minister of National Education, confirmed that free versions of Office and Google Workspace should not be used in schools due to concerns about competition, along with privacy rules and data sovereignty.

At the time of writing, Microsoft has not commented on the latest Reuters report.

UC Today will continue to follow the story and provide further details when we have them.