EU questions Microsoft rivals over teams integration in office

EU antitrust regulators are following up on a complaint by Slack Technologies by asking Microsoft's rivals if its Teams app integrated with its Office product gives it greater clout, in a sign that they could open an investigation.

In a questionnaire sent to rivals and seen by Reuters, the European Commission is focusing on the period 2016 to 2021. Microsoft introduced Teams in early 2017 to compete with Slack and others in the fast-growing workplace collaboration market.

Slack, bought by business software maker Salesforce.com in July, took its grievance over Microsoft's Teams software to the Commission last year.


Microsoft, which has been handed ₹2.2 billion ($2.6 billion) in EU fines for cases involving so-called tying and other practices in previous decade, declined to comment.

Slack alleged that tying or bundling Teams with Office was illegal and urged the EU competition agency to separate the two.

It said Microsoft pre-installs the workplace chat, it was difficult to un-install and that the U.S. company refused to provide information which would allow rival products to work with Teams and Office.