Microsoft once again ends up in the crosshairs of the EU Commission for abuse of a dominant position: the American company is said to have violated European Union antitrust rules by tying Teams to its main productivity applications included in its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 business packages , suspects Brussels, which yesterday communicated the charges found to the Redmont group. Microsoft President Brad Smith immediately responded to the Commission’s preliminary opinion, stating that the company “will work to find solutions to address the Commission’s remaining concerns.”
According to Brussels, Microsoft (at least since April 2019) may have given Teams a distribution advantage by not offering customers the choice of whether or not to gain access to its communication and sharing app when subscribing to its applications of productivity «software as a service» (or Saas) for professional use, where it has a clear dominant position. To the detriment of rivals like Zoom or Slack. The latter, controlled by Salesforce, is one of the two companies that filed a complaint in Brussels, after the similar complaint by the German Alfaview, prompting the EU Antitrust to launch a preliminary investigation in July 2023. Since then Microsoft has introduced some changes , starting to offer some suites without Teams.
But the measures adopted would be “insufficient” according to the Commission, which calls for “further changes” to restore competition. “We are concerned that Microsoft may be giving its Teams communications product an unfair advantage over competitors by tying it into its popular enterprise productivity suites,” said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president for competition policy. Now the word goes to Microsoft. If its answers are not convincing, the Commission could sanction the group with a fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide turnover and, in addition, impose any proportionate remedy to put an end to the violation of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.
In short, the Brussels clash against Big Tech is heating up. On Monday, the Commission accused Apple of stifling competition on the Apple Store, based on the Digital Markets Act, the new rules on digital markets, so much so as to push the Cupertino group to postpone the launch of artificial intelligence in Europe until next year. ‘iPhone and other devices, initially expected in September. But Brussels is also evaluating an intervention on the AI front, after the US authorities’ spotlight on Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft again.
The first battle between the EU Commission and Microsoft dates back to 2004, when the EU Antitrust, then led by Mario Monti, sanctioned the US company with a fine of 497 million euros for not having made the data available to competitors and for having tied Media Player to its operating system
In 2006 Brussels added another 280.5 million fine because Microsoft did not apply the 2004 orders. In 2008 the EU added a further 899 million fine because the group still did not comply with the 2004 remedies
In 2012 Microsoft won the appeal which reduced the fine from 899 to 860 million.
