Microsoft is attempting to allay antitrust concerns raised by the European Union about its business practices in response to a complaint from Salesforce’s Slack. The action could prevent a formal EU antitrust inquiry from being launched. It highlights once more Microsoft’s recent propensity for resolving disputes with authorities as opposed to sparring with them as it did in the preceding ten years.
Microsoft has made a preliminary offer of concessions in an effort to alleviate the EU competition enforcer’s worries. The software behemoth has been charged by Slack of unjustly incorporating Teams, a chat, and video tool, into its Office product. In the past ten years, Microsoft has paid 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in EU fines for instances involving so-called tying and other activities.
In October, the EU competition authority sent competitors a second round of questionnaires requesting further information on Microsoft’s bundling and interoperability policies. Other objections about Microsoft’s cloud computing operations have also been made.
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