--Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo
Slack—the now-nearly ubiquitous, purple work-chatting platform—has filed a formal complaint alleging that tech titan Microsoft is unlawfully abusing its power to squeeze newer rivals out of the market—almost the exact same accusations Microsoft infamously faced 20 years ago.
San Francisco-based Slack filed a complaint with the European Commission detailing "Microsoft's illegal and anti-competitive practice of abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law," the company said today.
Workplace messaging service Slack announced Wednesday it has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission on Wednesday, alleging the tech giant is using its market dominance to crowd out competition.
The complaint accuses Microsoft of illegally tying its workplace product, Teams, to its suite of productivity tools, forcing millions of installs and hiding the true costs from enterprise customers.
Slack has filed a complaint with the European Commission that accuses Microsoft of unfairly bundling its Teams collaboration app with its Office 365 suite. That move, Slack argues, allows Microsoft to abuse its market dominance to “extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law.
“Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers,” Slack said.