Microsoft is seeking to address antitrust concerns in the European Union over its business practices that were raised by complaints about Salesforce’s workspace messaging app Slack, sources said. The move, which could prevent the EU from launching a formal antitrust investigation, once again highlights Microsoft’s newfound preference to resolve issues with regulators rather than argue with them, as it did in the previous decade.
Last year, Microsoft once again found itself in the crosshairs of the European Commission after Slack accused it of unfairly integrating its workplace chat and video app Teams into its Office product. Microsoft launched Teams in 2017 with the aim of taking a slice of the fast-growing and lucrative workplace collaboration market.
Microsoft has offered initial concessions to try to assuage the EU’s concerns, one of the people said.
Microsoft, which has been fined 2.2 billion euros (about 16.126 billion CNY) by the EU in cases involving so-called tying and other practices over the past decade, declined to comment.
Microsoft has previously said it created Teams to combine collaboration capabilities with the ability to connect via video, and that it gained popularity during the outbreak, while Slack suffered because it didn’t have video conferencing.
Other people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month that the EU antitrust watchdog sent the second batch of questionnaires to rivals in October asking for more details about Microsoft’s interoperability and bundling practices, suggesting it may be gearing up for a formal investigation.
Microsoft is also the target of several cloud-related antitrust complaints, as well as complaints about its bundling of OneDrive with Windows.
