Synopsis
Salesforce and its app Slack have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in London. They accuse Microsoft of anticompetitive practices with its Teams app. This involves bundling Teams with other products to limit customer choice. This follows a similar complaint made to the European Commission in 2020. Microsoft previously reached an agreement with the European Commission regarding pricing.Listen to this article in summarized format
Slack Technologies LLC and related companies filed the lawsuit on April 23, which a Slack spokesperson said was "because Microsoft's practices harmed competition, using tying and bundling of Teams to limit customer choice".
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Slack had in 2020 complained to the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of bundling Teams with its Office product to gain an unfair advantage over rivals.
The U.S. software giant avoided a potentially hefty fine by promising reduced prices for Office products excluding Teams in an agreement with the European Commission last year.
The filing of the lawsuit came in the same week that London's Competition Appeal Tribunal certified a mass lawsuit alleging Microsoft overcharged British businesses to use Windows Server software on cloud computing services provided by rivals.
Microsoft disputes the allegations made in that case.
