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| Microsoft Teams and Office integration raises complaints |
The European Union's antitrust agency is investigating Slack's complaint, asking Microsoft's competitors whether the Teams app built into Office products gives them more leverage and saying they can open an investigation.
In a survey sent to competitors and seen by Reuters, the European Commission focused on 2016-2021. The software giant launched its Thames platform in early 2017 to compete with companies like Slack in the fast-growing workplace collaboration market.
Slack was acquired by commercial salesforce last July, and Thames sued the commission last year.
Over the past decade, Microsoft has received fines from the European Union totaling €2.2 billion (US$2.6 billion) in connection with so-called restrictive practices and other related cases, but it declined to comment.
Slack claims that it's illegal to link or group Teams with Office. The European Union's competition authority has asked the two to go their separate ways.
She said Microsoft preinstalled Workplace Chat. Difficult to uninstall. The US company refused to provide information that would allow competing products to work with Times and Office.
Microsoft team hurts its competitors
This prompted the committee to question whether the combined product would provide the company with data that could increase its market power in both markets. At the same time, it becomes more difficult to compete with competitors, especially those who only have products.
It also asked about barriers to entry or expansion of the workplace application market, the cost of switching customers, and the importance of protecting user data.
Participants were asked to provide a list of customers who switched to Teams or Office Aggregator. And the percentage of income they lose as a result. Besides the impact of investments in integrated products in the innovation, quality and price of its products.
The survey asked if the coronavirus is increasing demand for workplace apps and how that demand has evolved after the pandemic. Other companies that offer workplace apps are Zoom, Google, Facebook, and Cisco.