An instant messaging platform named Slack has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the European Commission. The company accused Microsoft of tying its Teams product with Microsoft 365 cloud productivity suite.
According to the Financial Times Slack claims that Microsoft has illegally abused its market dominance and tied its rival product Teams to its already-dominant O365 or now called Microsoft 365 suite.
Slack executives are asking EU regulators to act quickly and stop Microsoft from leveraging its dominance even more in an unfair way. The company also wants Microsoft to sell its Teams product separately from the Microsoft 365 package instead of packing it with the existing suite.
And while Slack’s full complaint to European Commission still isn’t released to the general public, EU lawmakers are considering giving the regional antitrust regulators more power so that they can intervene in digital markets faster in case of unfair behavior.
Microsoft responded to complaints saying that Teams were created with collaboration and the ability to connect via video as a result of customer requests. The reason why the Teams were embraced better than Slack lies in Slacks’ absence of video-conferencing features.
The European Commission will now process Slacks complaints and determine if it has a base for a formal investigation.