Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of May 5, Beijing time, Microsoft has reportedly encountered peer antitrust complaints about bundling corporate collaborative chat tools Teams and Office office software in the European Union. in order to avoid a formal antitrust investigation and fines by the European Commission, Microsoft has proposed differential pricing for Office products bundled with Teams software, that is, separate charges for Teams software, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Last year, Slack, an enterprise chat tool owned by US business software giant Salesforce, filed a complaint with the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of bundling with office software. Since then, Microsoft has been considering compromise measures to address the concerns of EU antitrust authorities, people familiar with the matter said last year.

As early as 2020, Slack questioned Microsoft, saying it was unfair market behavior for Microsoft to integrate Teams into Office office software. In 2017, with the growing market for enterprise collaborative chat tools, Microsoft developed Teams to enter the market.

On Thursday, local time, the European Commission said that in addition to Slack, other companies have also filed complaints about Microsoft's move.

A spokesman for the European Commission said the European Commission had received complaints from a number of companies, including Slack, about Microsoft's bundling of Teams and was currently reviewing these complaints and could not provide further comment.

Salesforce, the parent company of Slack, did not comment on Microsoft's proposed compromise.

According to sources, the European Commission is seeking feedback from Microsoft's Teams competitors on Microsoft's proposed compromise.

It is worth mentioning that in terms of antitrust, Microsoft is already a regular customer of the European Union. Over the past decade, Microsoft has been fined 2.2 billion euros (CTOnews.com Note: about 16.786 billion yuan, equivalent to $2.4 billion) for violating EU antitrust laws, mainly by bundling two or more of its products to each other.

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