The EU watchdog said Microsoft’s changes were not enough to address its concerns | Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

EU antitrust regulators charged Microsoft on Tuesday (25 June) of illegally bundling its chat and video app Teams with its enterprise Office product.

The European Commission outlined concerns that the US tech giant has been “restricting competition” by bundling products.

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“Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365,” the European Commission said in a statement.

The regulator said Microsoft may have given its video conferencing app Teams a “distribution advantage” by not giving customers a choice on whether or not to download the software.

Microsoft started to offer some Office products without Teams in the last few months, but the regulator said that it was not enough to address its concerns and more needs to be done to “restore competition”.

“The Commission preliminarily finds that these changes are insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s conduct are necessary to restore competition,” the statement continued.

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Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement that the company will continue to work “to find solutions to address the Commission‘s remaining concerns.”

The commission opened its initial investigation into the tech giant in July 2023 after Salesforce, the owner of rival messaging app Slack, made a complaint against the bundling of Teams in 2020, claiming Microsoft was hurting competition and abusing its market position.