Following up on a complaint from Slack Technologies, EU antitrust investigators are asking Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) competitors if its Teams software connected with its Office product gives it more clout, indicating that they may launch an investigation.
The European Commission is focusing on the period 2016 to 2021 in a questionnaire given to competitors and reviewed by Reuters. Microsoft launched Teams in early 2017 to compete with Slack and other workplace collaboration apps on the fast-growing market.
Last year, Slack, which was bought by enterprise software manufacturer Salesforce.com (CRM.N) in July, filed a complaint with the Commission against Microsoft’s Teams program.
Microsoft, which was fined 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) by the EU in the previous decade for cases involving so-called tying and other violations, declined to comment. Slack said that linking or combining Teams and Office was prohibited and sought the European Commission’s competition authority to separate the two.
Microsoft pre-installs the workplace chat, it’s tough to uninstall, and the corporation won’t share information that would allow competing programs to operate with Teams and Office, according to the report.
As a result, the Commission has inquired as to whether bundled products allow corporations access to data that could boost their market power in both markets while also making it more difficult for competitors, particularly those with only a product, to compete.
It also inquired about barriers to entry or expansion in the workplace app industry, consumer switching fees, and the necessity of protecting user data. Rivals were requested to provide a list of customers who had converted to Microsoft Teams or the packaged Office, as well as the proportion of revenue they had lost as a result of the transfer, as well as the impact of the integrated products on their innovation investments and product quality and price. The survey asked if the COVID-19 had increased demand for workplace apps and how this would change after the epidemic. Zoom Video Communications (ZM.O), Alphabet’s Google, Facebook (FB.O), and Cisco are among the companies that offer workplace apps (CSCO.O).
