European Commission says Microsoft Teams bundle violates antitrust rules
June 25 (UPI) -- The European Commission told Microsoft on Tuesday it has not done enough to decouple its Teams collaboration tool from Microsoft Office and 365 to foster third-party competition, violating the European Union's antitrust rules.
The commission said since April 2019, Teams has been tied to Microsoft's core software as a service, or SaaS, productivity applications, which restricted competition from third parties.
It found that Microsoft is dominant worldwide in the market of SaaS productivity applications for professional use.
"In particular, the commission is concerned that Microsoft may have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity application," the commission said.
Last summer, Microsoft introduced changes in how it distributes Teams, including eliminating the tool from some Microsoft suite offerings. The software giant told the commission it would unbundle Teams from MS 365 and Office 365 to comply with European law.
The commission said on Tuesday that Microsoft has not taken enough steps to make a difference.
"The commission preliminarily finds that these changes are insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft's conduct are necessary to restore competition," the commission said in a statement.
Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said Microsoft must show that it has not given Teams a leg up over competing communication tools.
"Preserving competition for remote communication and collaboration tools is essential as it also fosters innovation in these markets," Vestager said in a statement. "If confirmed, Microsoft's conduct would be illegal under our competition rules. Microsoft now has the opportunity to reply to our concerns."
