Microsoft was seemingly out of the antitrust woods over its alleged bundling of Teams in the EU, but sources familiar with the European Commission’s investigation believe a formal charge could be headed the company’s way.
Last month Microsoft offered some last minute concessions to the way it would distribute Teams in the EU that saw the company unbundle Teams from its full Office 365 suite and offered as a standalone product purchased separately.
While counterintuitive to offering a cohesive full stack experience, the move was made to assuage complaints formed in the EU from rival enterprise chat services such as Slack and Zoom as well as squelch a possible formal charge of anticompetitive behavior that could result in fines for Microsoft.
However, Brussels could be set to continue a probe into Microsoft’s handling of Teams despite its recent unbundling sacrifice to the regulatory body of the EU.
Regulators remain skeptical of Microsoft offering preferential treatment of Teams over rival third party chat services within its Office 365 software to undermine its own concessions and promote its own enterprise app in the market.
While the official charge could surface as early as this week, there is still a world in which the sources are working on outdated information, Microsoft makes further app compatibility promises or internal discussions in the EU find the current concessions amenable.
If Microsoft were to be charged and found guilty of anticompetitive behavior with its Teams app in the EU, the company could face up to ten percent of its global annual revenue taxed as well as opening itself for precedent for other cases in the UK as well as the US.
