The European Union on Tuesday Microsoft The company is accused of violating antitrust laws by “abusively” bundling Teams with Office products.
“The European Commission has delivered a preliminary opinion to Microsoft that it has violated EU antitrust rules by linking its communications and collaboration product, Teams, to popular productivity applications included in the enterprise suites Office 365 and Microsoft 365,” the EU executive body said in a statement of objections.
CNBC reached out to Microsoft but did not immediately receive a comment.
This follows Microsoft’s decision last year to spin off Teams from Microsoft 365 to address antitrust concerns from the EU.
But in a statement on Tuesday, the European Commission said the changes were “insufficient to address our concerns and further changes to Microsoft’s behavior are needed to restore competition.”
The EU launched an investigation into Microsoft in July 2023, which is still ongoing. Salesforceowns Slack, which offers a rival chat service to Teams.
The formal step in a European Commission investigation is to send the company a Notice of Complaint outlining the concerns raised, after which the party may respond to the Notice.
If, after the company responds, the European Commission determines that a violation has occurred, it can ban the conduct and fine the company up to 10% of its global revenue.
This is breaking news and will be updated shortly.