EU antitrust regulators will investigate Microsoft because of the bundling of Office and Teams

CTOnews.com, July 27 (Reuters)-EU antitrust regulators will investigate Microsoft's bundling of its chat app Teams and office app Office because it is "an anti-competitive behavior", Reuters reported today.

The Slack app, owned by Salesforce, complained as early as 2020 that Microsoft abused its market dominance by bundling Microsoft Teams with its popular Office office software to eliminate competition from Microsoft Teams.

But Microsoft's proposed remedies failed to convince EU competition enforcers, which sent a questionnaire to Microsoft's competitors: "will the bundling of Microsoft Teams and Office bring more influence to Microsoft?"

"the European Commission is concerned that Microsoft may be abusing and maintaining its market position in productivity software and limiting competition in communications and collaboration products in the European Economic area," the European Commission said in a statement. "

CTOnews.com7 reported on March 17 that several people familiar with the matter said that the European Union would launch a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft's Office office suite bundled with Teams apps next week. Four people familiar with the matter said that although Microsoft has made some concessions to allay competition concerns, it does not seem to be enough. Two of the people added that once the investigation began, Microsoft could face formal charges from the European Union as early as this autumn.

Now, with the launch of the investigation, the news of the "informed person" has been officially hammered.