Slack Accuses Microsoft of Illegally Crushing Competition

Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, accusing the tech giant of using its market power to try to crush the upstart rival. Slack claims that Microsoft has illegally tied its collaboration software, Microsoft Teams, to its dominant suite of productivity programs, Microsoft Office, which includes Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That bundling tactic, Slack contends, is part of a pattern of anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft. Slack’s complaint is just a first step. The European Commission must decide if a formal investigation is warranted. In recent years, European regulators have more aggressively pursued antitrust actions against large tech companies than American officials.