EU accuses Microsoft of breaching antitrust rules via Teams

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - The European Commission on Tuesday accused Microsoft of breaking the union's 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.

Teams, as a cloud-based communication and collaboration tool, offers functionalities such as messaging, calling, video meetings, and file sharing, and brings together Microsoft's and third-party workplace tools and other applications, the commission said on Tuesday.

It stated: "The Commission preliminarily finds that Microsoft is dominant worldwide in the market for SaaS (software as a service) productivity applications for professional use.

"The Commission is concerned that, since at least April 2019, Microsoft has been tying Teams with its core SaaS productivity applications, thereby restricting competition on the market for communication and collaboration products and defending its market position in productivity software and its suites-centric model from competing suppliers of individual software."

The commission is "concerned" that Microsoft may have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving buyers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications.

"This advantage may have been further exacerbated by interoperability limitations between Teams' competitors and Microsoft's offerings," it stressed, adding that the conduct may have prevented Teams' rivals from competing, and in turn innovating, to the detriment of customers in the European Economic Area.