EU opens antitrust probe into Microsoft over Teams bundling

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

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that these practices may constitute anti-competitive behavior.

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It is the first antitrust investigation by the EU into Microsoft in over a decade.

“The Commission is concerned that Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings,” the EU regulators said on Thursday in a press release.

In other words, the EU is concerned Microsoft is not giving customers the choice to not buy Teams when they subscribe to the company’s Office 365 product. In doing so, Microsoft might be stopping other companies from competing in the workplace messaging and video app space.

“These practices may constitute anti-competitive tying or bundling and prevent suppliers of other communication and collaboration tools from competing,” the Commission added.

Microsoft 365, previously known as Office 365, is Microsoft’s set of software which includes workplace-geared apps like Word and Excel.

Concerns over Microsoft on competitiveness grounds were first raised in 2020, when Teams rival Slack submitted a complaint to the EU, in which it alleged the Redmond tech giant illegally tied Teams to its dominant productivity packages, such as Microsoft 365.

A Microsoft spokesperson said, “We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously. We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.”