Microsoft’s ‘abusive’ bundling of Teams and Office products breached antitrust rules, EU says

The European Union on Tuesday accused Microsoft of breaching antitrust rules with the “abusive” bundling of its Teams and Office products.

“The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365,” the European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — said in a Statement of Objections.

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

It comes after Microsoft last year unbundled Teams from Microsoft 365 in an effort to quash antitrust concerns by the EU.

However, in its Tuesday statement, the Commission said the changes were “insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s conduct are necessary to restore competition.”

The EU opened its investigation into Microsoft — which remains ongoing — in July 2023 following a complaint by Salesforce-owned Slack, which has a rival chat service to Teams.

A formal step in European Commission investigations, a Statement of Objections is sent to the relevant companies outlining the concerns raised against them. These parties can then respond to the statement.

After the companies have responded, if the Commission decides that an infringement has taken place, it can ban the conduct and fine the company up to 10% of its global revenue.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.