Slack files formal EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft
Slack has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, arguing its bundling of its Teams messaging service and Office 365 is anti-competitive.
Workplace messaging app Slack is a rival of Teams, which also offers video conferencing services.
The complaint, filed this afternoon, accuses Microsoft of “illegal and anti-competitive practice” in abusing its market power to side-step competing services, breaching European Union competition law.
“Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers,” Slack said in a statement.
“We’re confident that we win on the merits of our product, but we can’t ignore illegal behaviour that deprives customers of access to the tools and solutions they want,” said Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policy at Slack.
The European Commission is now reviewing the complaint and will decide whether it should open a formal investigation of Microsoft’s practices.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “With Covid-19, the market has embraced Teams in record numbers while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing. We’re committed to offering customers not only the best of new innovation, but a wide variety of choice in how they purchase and use the product.
“We look forward to providing additional information to the European Commission and answering any questions they may have.”
Microsoft was last under the scrutiny of the European Commission in 2008, when it was accused of using its dominant market position to use its Internet Explorer web browser by force-installing it with Windows.
Microsoft settled with the EU at the time, but was later fined €561m in 2013 for failing to hold up its end of the agreement.
Slack’s general counsel David Schellhase added: “Microsoft is reverting to past behaviour. They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy of their illegal behaviour during the ‘browser wars.’
“Slack is asking the European Commission to take swift action to ensure Microsoft cannot continue to illegally leverage its power from one market to another by bundling or tying products.”