Microsoft wants to address antitrust concerns raised by Salesforce workspace messaging app Slack in the European Union about its business practices.
According to one person familiar with the situation, it went so far as to make a preliminary offer of concessions in order to assuage the EU competition enforcer’s concerns.
The investigation was launched in response to a complaint filed by Salesforce, the owner of Teams rival Slack, last year, alleging that Microsoft’s decision to bundle Teams with its Office 365 suite amounted to anti-competitive business practices, making it more difficult to sell competing products. It desired that Microsoft unbundle Teams and sell it separately at market value.
However, Microsoft stated that Teams was created to combine the ability to collaborate with the ability to connect via video and that it gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas Slack suffered from its lack of video-conferencing.
Microsoft’s attempt to negotiate highlights the company’s new preference for resolving issues with regulators rather than fighting legal battles that cost it 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in EU fines in the previous decade.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.