Washington CNN —European officials are investigating whether Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Teams software with Office 365 is anticompetitive, the European Commission said Thursday. The EU probe follows a formal complaint by Microsoft’s rival, the Salesforce-owned Slack, in 2020, alleging that Microsoft has illegally circumvented competition. By packaging Teams together with its “well-entrenched” productivity suite, including apps such as Word and Outlook, Microsoft could be effectively blocking customers from seeking out rival collaboration tools, the Commission said. “We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. We first need to identify indeed if there is a breach of antitrust considerations.”The in-depth investigation reflects rising EU antitrust scrutiny for Microsoft, which was last fined on a competition violation in 2013 for not honoring a commitment to give European consumers a choice in web browsers.

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Persons: Slack, ”, “, Arianna Podesta, Slack’s, Jonathan Prince Organizations: Washington CNN, European Commission, EU, Microsoft, Antitrust