Slack has filed an antitrust claim against Microsoft with the European Commission over its Teams app. The work messaging platform claims that Microsoft Teams has an unfair advantage.

 

Slack’s complaint is regarding the bundling of Teams within Office 365 by Microsoft. The company says the practice is “illegal and anti-competitive” and that Microsoft was “abusing its market dominance”.

 

The complaint will be reviewed by the European Commission. Microsoft says that it is providing the commission with the necessary information.

 

A Microsoft spokesperson in a statement said, “We created Teams to combine the ability to collaborate with the ability to connect via video because that’s what people want.

 

“With Covid-19, the market has embraced Teams in record numbers while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing. We’re committed to offering customers not only the best of new innovation but a wide variety of choice in how they purchase and use the product. We look forward to providing additional information to the European Commission and answering any questions they may have”.

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Slack on its part says that what it wants is a “level playing field”. The company alleges that Microsoft’s offering of Teams to Office 365 users makes it harder for Slack to sell its own software to the market.

 

“We want to be the 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more valuable; they want 100% of your budget every time,” said Jonathan Prince, Slack’s vice president of communications and policy.

 

The interesting thing perhaps is that in May 2020, Slack’s chief executive Stewart Butterfield had said that Teams and his company were not rivals.

 

Both apps experienced growth during the lockdown period. Microsoft Teams grew from 44 million in March 2020 to 75 million users in April 2020 while Slack had 12.5 million users by  March 2020.

 

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