Microsoft May Regret Bundling Teams With 365 Subscriptions

Microsoft is being investigated by the European Commission for possible anticompetitive behavior.

Today the European Commission announced it has opened a formal investigation(Opens in a new window) into Microsoft for bundling Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365. In doing so, Microsoft may have breached EU competition rules, may be “abusing and defending its market position,” and “restricting competition” within the European Economic Area.

This investigation is the result of a complaint filed by Slack Technologies back in July 2020, which alleged Microsoft “illegally tied Teams to its dominant productivity suites.” Therefore, the focus of the investigation is on Microsoft deciding to include Teams with its cloud-based productivity suites (Office 365 and Microsoft 365) for business customers.

After reviewing the complaint, the Commission became concerned that:

“Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings.”

If the investigation proves this to be the case, Microsoft may be breaching EU competition rules and abusing its dominant position under Article 102(Opens in a new window) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Microsoft has been made aware of the investigation by the Commission, and there is no deadline attached for it concluding.

Microsoft continues to add new features to both its productivity suites and Teams in a bid to attract more users. Microsoft 365’s Office apps just got a new default theme, while Teams got Discord-like communities and the option for AI to apply virtual makeup to meeting attendees. Windows users can also enjoy a faster Teams experience that uses less memory thanks to a recent redesign.

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