Positive Competition is very pleased with the European Commission’s opening of an investigation into Microsoft’s potential violation of EU competition rules by bundling its communication and collaboration tool Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites.

Positive Competition is very pleased with the European Commission’s opening of an investigation into Microsoft’s potential violation of EU competition rules by bundling its communication and collaboration tool Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites.

The European Commission is concerned that Microsoft is granting Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice of whether or not to include Team to their productivity stack when they subscribe to the other Microsoft products included in Office 365 and Microsoft 365. If the Commission’s concerns materialise, it would imply that Microsoft is abusing and defending its market position in productivity software by restricting competition for communication and collaboration products in the European Economic Area.

Slack Technologies, Inc. submitted the complaint against Microsoft on July 14th 2020, alleging that Microsoft illegally tied Teams to its dominant productivity suites.

We really hope that this case will open the tech stack of many enterprises and businesses.

Congratulations to Trevor Soames, Athena Kontosakou and Christina Kolotourou from Quinn Emanuel, and to our Positive Competition team, led by Founding Partners Aleksandra Boutin and Xavier Boutin, for their diligent work on supporting the complaint.