The European Union stated Thursday that it has opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft over considerations that bundling its Groups messaging and videoconferencing app with its Workplace productiveness software program offers it an unfair edge over opponents.
The European Fee, the 27-nation bloc’s high competitors enforcer, stated it could perform its in-depth investigation “as a matter of precedence.”
The investigation stems from a grievance filed in 2020 by Slack Applied sciences, which makes standard office messaging software program.
Slack, owned by enterprise software program maker Salesforce, alleged that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance to remove competitors — in violation of EU legal guidelines — by illegally combining Groups with its Workplace suite, which incorporates Phrase, Excel and Outlook.
“Distant communication and collaboration instruments like Groups have change into indispensable for a lot of companies in Europe. We should due to this fact be certain that the markets for these merchandise stay aggressive,” stated Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust commissioner.
“This is the reason we’re investigating whether or not Microsoft’s tying of its productiveness suites with Groups could also be in breach of EU competitors guidelines,” she added.
Microsoft stated in an announcement that it revered “the European Fee’s work on this case.” It added that it could “proceed to cooperate with the fee and stay dedicated to discovering options that may deal with its considerations.”
Solely final week, the German alfaview video conferencing firm added its personal grievance over Microsoft Groups, arguing that bundling offers the U.S. tech big an unmatched aggressive benefit “that’s not justified by efficiency and that opponents like alfaview can not match.”
The fee says opening the investigation under no circumstances determines the result.
Europe has led the best way in ratcheting up scrutiny of Large Tech firms over worries that they’ve change into too dominant. When Brussels has seemed into Microsoft’s latest offers, nonetheless, the corporate has prevailed.
The EU accredited Microsoft’s plan to purchase online game maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, after the corporate provided to routinely license standard Activision titles like “Name of Responsibility” for cloud gaming platforms.
Microsoft additionally has received EU clearance to purchase online game firm Zenimax and speech recognition firm Nuance.
