The European Union is still conducting an investigation if Microsoft violated its anti-trust regulations when it bundled its Team online meeting services with Microsoft 365 subscriptions. This week, a new report from Reuters claims that Microsoft"s tech rivals have been sent a questionnaire concerning this topic by the EU"s European Commission regulatory agency.
The European Commission officially began its investigation into Microsoft for bundling Teams in July, over three years after Slack sent a complaint to the EU, stating that Microsoft was "hiding the true cost" of Teams to its customers by bundling it with Microsoft 365 with no option of offering Teams on its own.
In August, Microsoft announced it would offer Teams as a separate service in the European Economic Area, and Switzerland starting on October 1. The prices for that stand-alone service are €5 per month or €60 per year. Microsoft also announced plans to improve interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 with other apps and services along with adding support for "third-party solutions to host Office web applications."
However, these moves by Microsoft were reportedly not enough for the European Commission to stop their investigation. In this week"s story, Reuters stated:
Regulators asked rivals to provide feedback from potential customers on how their services could operate in tandem with Microsoft"s services, the pricing of products with and without Teams and eligibility criteria.
The EU enforcer also wanted to know whether it was easy for customers to switch to rivals, if network effects potentially block existing competitors or new ones from entering the market and whether cloud products could replace on-premise solutions.
The European Commission is reportedly planning to send a list of objections to Microsoft sometime in early 2024. Officially, Microsoft repeated previous statements that it was committed to finding solutions to address the needs of the EU regulators.