EU opens antitrust probe into Microsoft in excess of Groups bundling

European Union regulators on Thursday opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its video clip and chat application Teams with other Workplace products and solutions.

The European Commission, the EU’s government arm, stated that these tactics may well represent anti-aggressive conduct.

It is the initially antitrust investigation by the EU into Microsoft in over a ten years.

“The Commission is anxious that Microsoft might grant Teams a distribution benefit by not giving prospects the option on irrespective of whether or not to consist of entry to that product or service when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may possibly have constrained the interoperability amongst its productiveness suites and competing offerings,” the EU regulators reported on Thursday in a press launch.

In other phrases, the EU is involved Microsoft is not giving clients the option to not invest in Teams when they subscribe to the company’s Office 365 merchandise. In doing so, Microsoft could be halting other firms from competing in the place of work messaging and video clip app space.

“These methods may possibly represent anti-competitive tying or bundling and protect against suppliers of other interaction and collaboration applications from competing,” the Commission added.

Microsoft 365, previously known as Business office 365, is Microsoft’s set of computer software which contains office-geared apps like Term and Excel.

Antitrust investigations do not have a self-imposed completion deadline. If Microsoft is identified to be in breach of EU competitors regulations, the U.S. tech large could confront a high-quality of up to 10% of its overall world wide yearly turnover.

Considerations over Microsoft on competitiveness grounds were initially lifted in 2020, when Teams rival Slack submitted a complaint to the EU, in which it alleged the Redmond tech large illegally tied Teams to its dominant productivity deals, these kinds of as Microsoft 365. Slack has said the move meant tens of millions of consumers ended up compelled to set up Teams with out the skill to remove it.

A Microsoft spokesperson stated, “We respect the European Commission’s get the job done on this scenario and take our have duties incredibly severely. We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and continue to be committed to discovering methods that will address its considerations.”

– CNBC’s Silvia Amaro and Ryan Browne contributed to this report.