Microsoft Reportedly Working to Head Off EU Antitrust Investigation

Microsoft has reportedly told European Union officials that it’s willing to charge for Teams.

The offer is meant to address the concerns of the EU’s competition regulator and help the company avoid an antitrust investigation, Reuters reported Thursday (May 4), citing unnamed sources.

Reached for comment by PYMNTS, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “We are mindful of our responsibilities in the EU as a major technology company. We continue to engage cooperatively with the Commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well.”

Under its offer to the EU, Microsoft would provide buyers a choice of two prices for its Office productivity suite, one with Teams and one without, according to the Reuters report.

The EU has received complaints from Slack and others that Microsoft had unfairly integrated those products, the report said.

Over the last decade, Microsoft has been fined 2.2 billion euros (about $2.4 billion) for practices that violated the EU’s competition rules, per the report.

Microsoft launched Teams in 2017, adding the chat-focused workspace to the Office suite of products and taking on Slack, Facebook, Google and others in the enterprise messaging marketplace.

In 2020, Slack filed a complaint with the EU’s competition regulator, the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of violating competition law by tying its Teams software to the Office suite.

In the complaint, Slack alleged Microsoft requires Office users to install the Teams software, blocks its removal and makes working with competitors impossible.

Slack asked the EU to rule Microsoft must sell its Teams software as a standalone product, rather than bundling it with Office.

In other news related to antitrust actions, a United Kingdom regulator’s investigation of Apple was halted March 31 when the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had not complied with the deadline required in the process.

The CMA had decided to investigate the supply of mobile browsers and browser engines and the distribution of cloud gaming services through app stores on mobile devices in the U.K.

About two months earlier, the German antitrust watchdog announced antitrust investigations against PayPal, saying it was probing the payment company over potentially anticompetitive terms in its user agreement applicable in Germany.

The Bundeskartellamt (BKartA) said that under PayPal’s terms, merchants aren’t allowed to offer their goods and services at lower prices if customers choose to use a payment method that is cheaper than PayPal.

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