Slack files European antitrust complaint against Microsoft for abuse of power

Slack has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft. The company accuses Microsoft of abusing its monopoly position, because the tech giant would have too much power with Teams.

Slack wants the European Commission to initiate an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s practices because of its dominant position in the market. Microsoft would use that dominance to thwart competitors like Slack. The complaint mainly focuses on Teams. That chat service is tied to the market-dominant Office by default, Slack says, allowing it to be installed by millions of users and hiding “the real costs from business users.”

Microsoft sees Slack as a competitor, says the maker of the chat app. “Slack threatens Microsoft’s position in the enterprise mail market, which is the cornerstone of Office, and that means Slack threatens Microsoft’s grip on enterprise software,” the company said.

According to Slack, Microsoft is abandoning its old practices. Then Microsoft also received a lot of criticism and billions in fines for linking its own browsers to Windows. “Microsoft is building a weak, counterfeit product and linking it to their own dominant Office product, forcing users to install it and blocking its removal,” said company lawyer David Schellhase. “It is a copy of their illegal behavior during the ‘browser wars’.”

It is striking that Slack indicated a few months ago that it did not see Teams as a competitor at all. The European Commission must deal with the complaint. After that, the EC must decide whether an investigation will actually follow. Microsoft has not yet responded to the complaint.