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The EU says Microsoft is potentially violating antitrust rules by bundling its Teams software with Office 365 and Microsoft 365.
"The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365," the Commission says.
By bundling these products together, Microsoft has restricted competition in the communication space, according to the Commission, which criticizes Microsoft for not giving users the option to opt out of getting Teams when they subscribe to Microsoft products, thereby giving it a distribution advantage over competitors like Slack.
Slack called out Microsoft for the practice in 2020, echoing the antitrust case Microsoft faced two decades ago in the US over bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system while giving customers no option to uninstall it.
The EU opened a formal investigation last year. At the time, Microsoft said, "We respect the European Commission's work on this case and take our own responsibility very seriously. We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns."
A month later, Microsoft announced it would unbundle Teams from Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions in the EU, calling it a "proactive change" to address the EU's concerns.
That did not seem to work. Microsoft will now have a chance to respond before the Commission makes a final ruling.
"Preserving competition for remote communication and collaboration tools is essential as it also fosters innovation [in] these markets," Margrethe Vestager, EVP in charge of competition policy, said in a statement.