The European Commission plans to launch a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s Teams video calling service. At least that is what Politico says based on multiple sources.
Politico relies on four sources who are said to be familiar with this matter. The investigation would be about whether and, if so, to what extent Microsoft unfairly links the Teams service and other software to the use of Office. A spokesperson for the Commission indicated that there is still an ‘assessment of the complaint’.
The European Commission, the EU’s competition regulator, is said to be planning to quickly scale up the investigation and are preparing a statement of objections. This document has also recently been sent to several of Microsoft’s competitors in which the Commission indicates what evidence it intends to use. A statement of objections is a document in which the Commission must indicate the facts on which it relies and how it assesses them. The aim is to inform one or more parties involved about the objections, so that the parties can relate to them and possibly defend themselves against them. It must also state which infringements the Commission has found and what evidence has played a role.
This issue surrounding Teams started when Slack in 2020 filed official complaint. In it, the company indicated that Microsoft would have too much power and actually abused its dominant position. According to Slack, Microsoft uses its dominant position to antagonize competitors, in the sense that Teams is tied to the market-dominant Office by default. Reuters reported late last year that Microsoft was working to address the concerns of the European Commission; Microsoft would then have proposed to make certain concessions. Slack is due at the end of 2020 acquired by Salesforce.
