Slack has filed the complaint with the European Commission that accuses Microsoft of unfairly bundling its Groups collaboration app using its Workplace 365 suite. That shift, Slack argues, allows Microsoft to abuse its market dominance to “extinguish competition inside breach of EU competition law.

“Microsoft has tied its Groups product into its market-dominant Workplace productivity suite illegally, force installing it for thousands, blocking its removal, and hiding the real cost to enterprise customers,” Slack said.

Microsoft ago launched Groups three years, making the combined team collaboration application open to Office 365 subscribers. Groups has 75 million everyday active users, This week microsoft said, month a rise of 31 million previously.

Slack’s app found its way to 2015 and contains 12 million users, from October 2019 in accordance with its latest stats.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has criticized Microsoft’s behavior on many occasions during the past, including states its rival provides inflated user statistics. Although Butterfield has mentioned Microsoft is not a primary competitor, he told The Verge in Might that Microsoft is “unhealthily preoccupied with killing us perhaps, and Teams may be the vehicle to achieve that.”

Slack statements that Microsoft’s proceed to push Groups adoption is similar to prior antitrust battles the program vendor has faced.

Microsoft was accused by the European Commission of bundling its WEB BROWSER web browser using its Windows operating-system in a 2009 case that has been settled with Microsoft promising to improve usage of rival platforms. So even, Microsoft was fined €561 million ($73s million) in 2013 when EU regulators identified that it hadn’t met its commitments.

“Microsoft is reverting to previous behavior,” stated David Schellhase, general counsel from Slack. “They created a weak, copycat product and tied it with their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy of these illegal behavior through the ‘web browser wars.’

“Slack is inquiring the European Commission to get swift action to make sure Microsoft cannot continue steadily to illegally leverage its strength from one market to some other by bundling or even tying items,” Schellhase said.

Slack said the European Commission can now evaluation the complaint and decide whether to open up a official investigation into Microsoft’s alleged anti-competitive procedures.

“It isn’t surprising that Slack would get this action should they feel it includes a high likelihood of achievement,” mentioned Irwin Lazar, vice services and president director with Nemertes Research.

“Stuart Butterfield has said that whilst they don’t really view Microsoft like direct competition, they believe that Microsoft is targeted on killing them, thus I’d expect Slack to utilize all legal implies that they believe they are able to leverage to guard themselves,” Lazar stated.

Groups, Slack and Cisco’s Webex Groups will be the most widely deployed group collaboration apps, in accordance with a Nemertes Research study. Cisco and Microsoft are usually deployed even more on an enterprise-wide schedule frequently, mentioned Lazar, with Slack used even more at the departmental degree.

“Slack continues to create its sights on developing into an enterprise-wide option to Microsoft Teams therefore i assume they’re hopeful that success inside this filing allows them to much better compete keenly against Microsoft, potentially eliminating the ‘Teams is free of charge with Office 365’  arguments that people hear from adopters usually,” he said.