EU Commission: Microsoft violates competition rules with Teams
Microsoft may have unbundled Teams, but that is not enough for the EU Commission. It still sees a violation of EU competition rules.
The EU Commission has not yet put a white tick on green for the business practices surrounding "Teams".
(Image: Microsoft)
The EU Commission accuses Microsoft of continuing to violate EU antitrust regulations with its communication and collaboration software "Teams". Although Microsoft began offering program packages without Teams in the summer of 2023, these changes have not allayed the EU Commission's concerns. It is demanding further adjustments from Microsoft to restore competition, according to a statement from Brussels.
The EU Commission has now informed Microsoft of this "preliminary view". Specifically, it continues to object to the fact that "Teams" is linked to its widely used productivity applications, which are included in its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software packages.
Microsoft holds a dominant position in the market for SaaS productivity applications for business users worldwide, the EU Commission writes further. In principle, this type of software distribution enables new market participants to offer SaaS products and customers can use different software from different providers. Microsoft, however, is practicing a package-centric business model in which several types of software are combined in a single offer.
Increased sales advantage for Microsoft
Microsoft has integrated the Teams software into its successful cloud-based platforms for business customers, Office 365 and Microsoft 365. As a result, the company has restricted competition in the market for communication and collaboration software and protected its market position in productivity software and its package-centric model from competing providers of individual software.
Not only did Microsoft potentially gain a distribution advantage by not letting customers decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to have access to Teams when subscribing to Microsoft's SaaS productivity applications, but Microsoft could also gain a distribution advantage by not letting customers decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to have access to Teams when subscribing to Microsoft's SaaS productivity applications. This advantage for the software company may have been exacerbated by Microsoft limiting interoperability between Teams competitors and its software packages.
"Remote communication and collaboration tools such as Teams have become indispensable for many companies in Europe," said EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in July 2023. "We must therefore ensure that the markets for these products remain open to competition and that companies are free to choose which products best meet their needs." On October 1, Microsoft then offered Microsoft 365 and Office 365 without Teams in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
(anw)
