Microsoft Corp.’s attempt at avoiding deeper European Union scrutiny of its Teams video-conferencing app fell flat with the bloc’s antitrust enforcers readying a formal complaint against the firm’s conduct.
Microsoft’s recent proposal to split its Teams from a broader business software package and sell it to customers separately with an annual discount wasn’t enough to satisfy regulators’ concerns, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The European Commission is preparing a statement of objections to send to the company, which could come in the next few months, the people said.
At the end of August, Microsoft attempted to allay concerns raised by the EU’s antitrust arm as part of a new investigation into how it ties Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 packages. The EU’s investigation followed a complaint from Salesforce Inc.’s messaging platform Slack some three years ago.
Microsoft and the commission both declined to comment on the EU’s next steps.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft faces at least two other complaints filed to EU regulators. They include one by a European cloud group with Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS among its members that accuses Microsoft of using unfair licensing practices to lure EU customers to its cloud infrastructure.
Another, filed by German cloud platform NextCloud GmbH in 2021, complains about Microsoft bundling its OneDrive cloud system with Windows.
Microsoft is also facing an investigation from the EU’s digital antitrust regulators, who are examining whether its Bing, Edge and Advertising services should come under the scope of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, which lay out a series of dos and don’ts for major tech companies.
(Updates with European Commission response in fifth paragraph.)
