Slack has gone public with a complaint against Microsoft to the European Commission. The company alleges that Microsoft has abused its dominant position by tying its Teams conferencing software with the Office suite. It will be up to the European Commission whether to investigate.
Slack accused Microsoft of violating EU competition law. "Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers," the company said in a statement. The company claims that Microsoft's practices are designed to protect its hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, as newcomers like Slack threaten Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise software market.
Capitalising on language used recently by the EU in its examination of competition issues in the tech industry, Slack said it was a situation of "gateways versus gatekeepers". Slack says it offers businesses a gateway to using software that competes with Microsoft's portfolio. "We want to be the 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more valuable; they want 100% of your budget every time."
David Schellhase, General Counsel at Slack, said Microsoft shows signs of repeat behaviour, after earlier being fined for illegal product bundling. He said this is "a carbon copy of their illegal behavior during the ‘browser wars’". In 2009, Microsoft agreed with the European Commission to offer Windows users a choice of web browser, after previously making Internet Explorer the default option. It was later fined EUR 561 million in 2012 for failure to implement the agreement completely.
