The European Commission is launching an official antitrust investigation into Microsoft over the unfair combination of Teams and Office.

For the first time in more than a decade, Microsoft is the subject of an antitrust investigation by the European Commission. A thorn in the side of the Europeans is the American company’s office software, which is too closely linked to its Teams communication platform.

concession

However, after a complaint from rival platform Slack, which belongs to Salesforce, Microsoft stopped automatically installing Teams on Office customers’ devices. The European Commission was apparently not impressed by this and now there is an official investigation into Microsoft’s market dominance.

Done talking

The complaint dates back to 2020, which was followed by various discussions between the EU and Microsoft. But now they have collapsed and an investigation seems inevitable.

Part of the reason why these talks have been broken off is because Microsoft wanted to make the concession only for the EU, where Europe finds it more desirable to trash the automatic combination of Teams and Office globally. A second reason is the pricing Microsoft uses for Teams.

It’s been almost 15 years since the EU launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft, which could mean Europe won’t have an easy time changing its mind. An effective complaint could even be formulated as early as next fall.

Following the latest investigations into Meta and Google, the EU appears to be showing big tech companies that they mean business when it comes to complying with European laws and regulations.