The European Union on Tuesday accused Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) of breaching antitrust rules with the “abusive” bundling of its Teams and Office products.
“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 European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — said in a Statement of Objections, which is sent to inform companies of concerns raised against them.
If the Commission decides that an infringement has taken place once companies have responded, it can ban the conduct and fine the charged company up to 10% of its global revenue.
Microsoft took the pre-emptive step to unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 in an effort to quash antitrust concerns by the EU. However, the Commission said in its Tuesday statement that the changes were “insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s conduct are necessary to restore competition.”
The EU opened its investigation into Microsoft — which remains ongoing — in July 2023 following a complaint by Salesforce-owned Slack, which has a rival chat service to Teams.
MSFT shares gained 13 cents Tuesday to open at $447.73.
