Microsoft Teams Bundle Hit With E.U. Antitrust Charges

[Pelican Press 0]

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Teams Bundle Hit With E.U. Antitrust Charges

********* Union regulators on Tuesday charged

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with breaking antitrust rules by bundling its Teams video conferencing and collaboration software with a suite of other productivity tools, giving it an unfair advantage over rivals.

Regulators said

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’s packaging of Teams with other well-established software tools in Office 365 and

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365, which includes programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and

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, amounted to an ******** ****** of market dominance that rival companies like Zoom and Slack could not match. Regulators

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businesses essentially had little choice but to take Teams if they wanted other software made by

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.

The charges are just the latest in a barrage of announcements by the ********* Union in recent months in its effort to ****** down on the world’s largest tech platforms. On Monday, regulators accused Apple of violating competition rules because of its App Store policies.

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,

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, Meta, TikTok and X are also facing investigations related to their business practices and services.

The

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case has its roots in the Covid-19 pandemic, when videoconferencing and collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack and Teams became essential for remote workforces. In 2020, Slack, now owned by Salesforce, complained to regulators that

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’s bundling of Teams with other productivity software was anticompetitive, setting off the initial E.U. investigation.

E.U. regulators said

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had an unfair “distribution advantage” by not giving customers a choice of whether to buy Teams when purchasing other software. Rivals makers of videoconferencing tools also face challenges making their services work with other

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software, regulators said.

“The conduct may have prevented Teams’ rivals from competing, and in turn innovating, to the detriment of customers,” the ********* Commission, the ********* Union’s executive branch conducting the investigation, said in a statement.

The charges brought on Tuesday are one step in a long process.

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can now respond to the complaint, but if the two sides do not reach an agreement, the company could face a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue.

The case has parallels to the antitrust charges brought decades ago by the U.S. Justice Department against

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for bundling Internet Explorer inside its Windows operating system, a case that was eventually resolved.

On Tuesday,

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said it had taken steps to resolve the dispute. Last year,

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agreed to sell Teams separately from Office products.

“Having unbundled Teams and taken initial interoperability steps, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to find solutions to address the commission‘s remaining concerns.” Brad Smith,

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’s president, said in a statement.

The ********* Commission said

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’s changes were “insufficient” and called for more changes to be made to “restore competition,” without specifying what those changes should be.

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#

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#Teams #Bundle #Hit #E.U #Antitrust #Charges

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