Slack Accuses Microsoft of Illegally Crushing Competition

Microsoft is undeniably one of the Big Tech elite, given its size, wealth and stock market value. But the software giant has stood apart from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple in one important respect: Microsoft, once the bully of the tech world, has escaped antitrust scrutiny so far. Now Slack, whose popular chat and collaboration software has become embedded in the daily routines of millions of workers at thousands of companies, is hoping to change that. From a report: Slack said on Wednesday that it had 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. In its filing, 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. “Slack threatens Microsoft’s hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft’s lock on enterprise software,” Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policy at Slack, said in a statement. Slack’s complaint is just a first step. The European Commission must assess the complaint to see if a formal investigation is warranted. In recent years, European regulators have more aggressively pursued antitrust actions against large tech companies than American regulators. But the complaint threatens Microsoft’s recent ability to largely avoid regulatory scrutiny. Federal and state regulators in the United States are investigating whether the other tech giants have broken antitrust laws. On Monday, the chief executives of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will testify before Congress, which is also looking into them.