Do you have commands on your computer? The European Commission said it was violating antitrust rules

This article was originally published in English

Microsoft broke the rules European Union antitrust laws by bundling its Teams video conferencing platform with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 products, the European Commission said on Tuesday, June 25.

Preliminary result investigation initiated by the Community Commission last July suggests the US tech giant is globally dominant in the market for software hosted on a provider’s choice of cloud infrastructure, called software as a service, or SaaS. By connecting Teams to its core software applications since April 2019, the European Commission fears that Microsoft is limiting competition in the market.

“The Commission is concerned that Microsoft may have provided Teams distribution advantage without giving customers the choice whether or not to purchase access to Teams when subscribing to SaaS productivity apps,” the European Commission said in a statement.

Thus, he adds that by “limiting work between Competitors’ offersthe company could also prevent its competitors from competing, which could put customers at a disadvantage.”

Changes in Microsoft software distribution

After the European Commission launched an investigation last year, Microsoft made changes to the way Teams* is distributed, separating the two programs. However, preliminary findings from the Community Executive indicate that these changes not enough to solve problems and that further changes in Microsoft’s behavior are necessary to restore competition.

Statement of objections does not predetermine the outcome of the investigation. Affected parties can now respond in writing and request an oral hearing state your thoughts on the case.

At a press roundtable in Brussels in early June, Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, expressed hope that changes made by the company was not enough. Smith then stated that, despite much that had been done to address the issue, “it seems clear that our work is not yet done.”

In a statement to Euronews on Tuesday, Smith said: “Once the teams are disaggregated and the first steps to ensure interoperability are in place, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to ensure searching of decisions which respond to the remaining concerns of the European Commission.

The antimonopoly investigation into the executive branch was related to complaint communication platform Slack, now owned by Salesforce, introduced in 2020.