software known under the name of Teams with their other products such as Microsoft Office. This leads to unfair practices as it creates a bigger advantage for Microsoft Teams compared to its competitors and other communication channels.
This antitrust fine was triggered by the complaint made in 2020 by Microsoft Team’s competitor – Slack. The allegations and the fine come 20 years after no actions against Microsoft. Reuters reported that the European Commission has been getting ready for charges since April this year.
Even more so, the reasoning for the European Commission's decision was based on Microsoft's unfair practices, which led to easier decisions for already Microsoft users and limitations for their competition. Think about users who are already familiar with Microsoft's practices, changing to a different communication platform, such as Slack, would just seem a harder task.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission antitrust chief, stated, “Preserving competition for remote communication and collaboration tools is essential as it also fosters innovation in these markets”.
However, it is not the first time when the tech company received such a fine. Twenty years ago, the tech company received a $2.4 billion fine for combining two or more products. This time, in the case where the company is found guilty, it is facing a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover.
This time, Microsoft is being charged for not investing enough resources into its efforts to create a fair market for its customers and the competition. The Brand President of Microsoft responded to those allegations: "Having unbundled Teams and taken initial interoperability steps, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to find solutions to address the Commission's remaining concerns,”.
It is also worth mentioning that Teams was added to Office 365 in 2017 and offered for free. After the pandemic, the requests for the product grew, and users and companies did not consider other options. This led to an unfair market where products such as Salesforce’s Slack were at a disadvantage. However, in April, Microsoft stopped offering Teams in their bundle in order to solve the problem presented by the EU Commission.
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