(Brussels) Microsoft is violating EU competition rules by linking its Teams videoconferencing application to its famous office software like Word and Excel, the European Commission again ruled on Tuesday, despite the group’s recent promises to resolve the problem .
The American giant announced on April 1 that it was dissociating Teams worldwide from its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which also include Powerpoint and Outlook. This separation had already been implemented in Europe since last October.
The Redmond, Washington-based group had stressed that its customers could now purchase the software without the videoconferencing application, at a lower price.
This commitment followed the opening of an investigation into abuse of dominant position by the European Commission in July 2023.
“After the case was filed, Microsoft changed the way it distributes Teams. In particular, it began to offer certain suites without Teams,” the Commission noted.
But it “believes, on a preliminary basis, that these changes are insufficient to address its concerns and that further changes to Microsoft’s behavior are necessary to restore competition.”
The European executive sees a problem in offering businesses in the form of an on-demand service (“Software as a service”, SaaS), thanks to cloud computing.
The Commission “is concerned that, since at least April 2019, Microsoft has tied Teams to its core SaaS applications, thereby restricting competition.” Brussels also believes that this problem “may have been exacerbated by interoperability limitations” between Teams competitors and other Microsoft software.
“Microsoft now has the opportunity to respond to our concerns,” said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, quoted in a press release.
The American giant promised to continue dialogue with Brussels, hoping to avoid a large fine.
“Having unbundled “Teams” and taken the first interoperability steps, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to find solutions to address the Commission’s remaining concerns,” responded the Microsoft president, Brad Smith.
The case started in July 2020 with a complaint from the young American company Slack, which has since been acquired by Salesforce.
Faced with losses of market share in the corporate messaging market, Slack had sued Microsoft for unfair competition before the European Commission.
Failing to comply, the American technology giant, already sanctioned several times by Brussels, could see itself imposed a new heavy fine.
