European Union accuses Microsoft of unfair competition with Teams and Office

The European Union Charges Microsoft with Antitrust Violations

The European Union has filed its first antitrust charges against Microsoft in the past ten years over the bundling of its video conferencing app Teams with the Office software suite. According to the Financial Times, on Tuesday, June 25, the European Commission handed the world’s most valuable public company a statement of objections, alleging that the unfair advantage given to Teams has harmed competitors such as Slack and Zoom.

Executive Vice-President of the EU responsible for competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, stated: «We are concerned about the potential granting of an unfair advantage to Microsoft’s communication product Teams by tying it to popular productivity applications. If the accusations are confirmed, it will be considered illegal behavior under our competition rules. Now Microsoft has the opportunity to respond to our concerns.»

These allegations are the most significant from Brussels since the disputes over Windows more than twenty years ago when the EU monitored the bundling of Microsoft software products.