The background of the commission’s investigation is Slack’s complaint from 2020.
The EU Commission suspects that the software giant Microsoft has abused its dominant market position by connecting the video conferencing program Teams to its other business software.
The Commission considers that Microsoft has a global dominant position in business software, to which it has bundled Teams since 2019. The suspicion is that the company has limited the opportunities of other communication and meeting programs to compete for the popularity of users.
The background of the commission’s investigation is Slack’s complaint from 2020. At that time, Slack’s market share had decreased and later it ended up being bought by Salesforce.
Microsoft has previously tried to answer the Commission’s doubts by removing Teams from the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software packages, first in Europe and later also in other parts of the world. However, according to the Commission, the changes made are not sufficient.
Microsoft executive Brad Smith assured in its comments on the Commission’s actions that Microsoft is ready to take further steps to avoid paying fines. Fines equivalent to 10 percent of their turnover can be imposed on companies for violating EU competition rules, but in practice such high fines are rarely imposed.
Recently, the Commission has intervened in Microsoft’s activities in other ways. It investigates the company’s cooperation with artificial intelligence company OpenAI and finds out whether it is a hidden corporate merger.
On Monday, the commission intervened in the operations of another technology giant, Apple, because it suspects that it has restricted competition in the App Store.
Source: AFP