The European Union said that Microsoft Teams and Office bundled to violate antitrust law

The European Union has tentatively found that Microsoft violated EU antitrust laws by bundling its video app Teams with its Office enterprise app.

The European Commission said in a statement on Tuesday (June 25) that Microsoft's bundling of Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software violated EU competition rules.

Eu Competition Commissioner Vestager said: "It is essential to maintain competition in long-distance communication and collaboration tools, which promote innovation in the market. If confirmed, Microsoft's actions would be illegal under competition rules."

Antitrust violations can result in fines of up to 10 per cent of a company's global revenue, which totaled US $211 billion (S $285.8 billion) in Microsoft's last fiscal year.

Microsoft President Smith said in a statement that the EU has now provided additional clarification after the company split Teams last year and took steps to do so, and that the company will work to find a solution to address other EU concerns.

After Salesforce's (CRM) Slack filed a complaint in 2020, the EU opened an investigation into Microsoft in July 2023, which is still ongoing.

Slack has a rival chat service to Teams. Slack accused Microsoft of giving Teams an unfair advantage by denying Slack the chance to compete on a level playing field by automatically including Teams in its Office software.

Usage of Microsoft's Teams video app has surged during the pandemic. In a short period of time, the app's global daily users grew from 2 million in its first year of operation in 2017 to 300 million in 2023, according to Statista.