EU opens Microsoft antitrust investigation into Groups bundling

The European Fee is opening a proper antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Groups software program with its Workplace productiveness suite. Slack initially filed an anti-competitive criticism towards Microsoft with the European Fee in July 2020, simply months after a worldwide pandemic started and the Microsoft Groups userbase began to develop quickly.

The European Fee will now perform an in-depth investigation into whether or not Microsoft might have breached EU competitors guidelines by tying or bundling Microsoft Groups to its Workplace 365 and Microsoft 365 productiveness suites.

“Distant communication and collaboration instruments like Groups have change into indispensable for a lot of companies in Europe,” explains Margrethe Vestager, government vice-president accountable for competitors coverage on the European Fee. “We should subsequently be sure that the markets for these merchandise stay aggressive, and corporations are free to decide on the merchandise that greatest meet their wants. Because of this we’re investigating whether or not Microsoft’s tying of its productiveness suites with Groups could also be in breach of EU competitors guidelines.”

Slack’s authentic criticism alleged that Microsoft had “illegally tied” its Microsoft Groups product to Workplace and is “power putting in it for thousands and thousands, blocking its removing, and hiding the true value to enterprise clients.” Now EU regulators are absolutely investigating the scenario, after Microsoft reportedly supplied a concession to the EU to cease bundling Groups with Workplace. This clearly wasn’t sufficient to keep away from an official antitrust investigation — the Monetary Occasions reported not too long ago that EU regulators and Microsoft couldn’t agree on whether or not the removing of bundling can be restricted to simply the EU and the way costs may be impacted to make sure competitors continues to be truthful.

Microsoft additionally not too long ago determined to take away its Microsoft Groups integration in Home windows 11. The Chat performance in Home windows 11 was solely ever accessible for customers and never the important thing enterprise customers that had been the main focus of Slack’s criticism. However Microsoft might have enabled enterprise help sooner or later on this built-in model, and it’s attainable the EU probe may need spooked Microsoft into killing the mixing altogether.

That is the primary time Microsoft has confronted an antitrust investigation within the EU for practically 15 years, following two large instances associated to Home windows Media Participant and Web Explorer bundling. In 2004 the European Fee ordered Microsoft to supply a model of Home windows with out Media Participant bundled. This resulted in a Home windows XP N model accessible in EU markets.

In 2009, the EU additionally investigated the bundling of Web Explorer with Home windows and Microsoft ended up promoting a Home windows 7 E model of its working system in Europe with out Web Explorer bundled. Microsoft was additionally compelled to implement a browser poll field in its Home windows working system to make sure customers had been introduced with a alternative of internet browsers. Microsoft was ultimately fined $730 million for failing to incorporate the browser poll in Home windows 7 SP1.