The European Union (EU) says Microsoft might have broken antitrust rules. They think Microsoft gave its Teams app an unfair advantage over other similar apps.
Teams is an app for messaging and video calls that Microsoft includes with its popular Office software. The EU believes Microsoft might have forced customers to get Teams when they bought Office, without giving them a choice.
The EU’s competition watchdog, called the European Commission, is worried that Microsoft isn’t playing fair. They think Microsoft might be making it hard for other companies’ messaging apps to work well with Microsoft’s software.
Margrethe Vestager, a top EU official, said it’s important to keep competition fair for these kinds of communication tools. This helps encourage new ideas and improvements.
Microsoft has already made some changes to try to avoid getting in trouble. For example, they started offering their software without Teams in Europe. But the EU says these changes aren’t enough.
If the EU decides Microsoft really did break the rules, the company could be fined up to 10% of its yearly global income. That would be a huge amount of money.
This all started when Slack, a company that makes a messaging app that competes with Teams, complained to the EU about Microsoft. Another company called Alfaview, which makes video call software, also complained.
Microsoft now has a chance to defend itself before the EU makes a final decision. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said they’ll try to find solutions to address the EU’s concerns.
This isn’t the only tech giant the EU is looking at. Just a day before, they accused Apple of breaking new digital competition rules. The EU is known for being tough on big tech companies.
Salesforce, the company that owns Slack, is happy about the EU’s actions. They think it’s a win for customer choice and hope the EU will take steps to make competition more fair in the digital world.
This situation shows how complicated the tech world can be, especially when it comes to big companies and fair competition.
The EU is trying to make sure that even powerful companies like Microsoft play by the rules and don’t take advantage of their size to push out smaller competitors.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.