The European Commission (EC) has determined that Microsoft violated the region’s antitrust regulations by taking advantage of its market dominance to promote one of its communication tools, thus potentially harming consumers and competitors. To avoid potentially billions in fines, Microsoft can now request an oral hearing before the agency makes its final decision.
The European Union commission’s judgment comes as part of a complaint filed by Slack Technologies, owned by Salesforce, in 2020. The complaint alleged that Microsoft used the firm’s clout in the market to push forward its cloud-based communication and collaboration tool “Teams.” The EC said in a June 25 press release that Microsoft has been including Teams in its cloud-productivity applications like Office 365 and Microsoft 365 since at least April 2019, “thereby restricting competition on the market for communication and collaboration products.”
