By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Microsoft is seeking to address European Union antitrust concerns about its business practices prompted by a complaint from Salesforce.com’s workspace messaging app Slack, people familiar with the matter said.
Microsoft found itself in the European Commission’s crosshairs again last year after Slack alleged that the U.S. software giant has unfairly integrated its workplace chat and video app Teams into its Office product.
Microsoft introduced Teams in 2017, aiming for a slice of the fast-growing and lucrative workplace collaboration market.
It has made a preliminary offer of concessions to allay the EU competition enforcer’s concerns, one of the people said.
Microsoft, which has been hit with 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in EU fines in the previous decade for cases involving so-called tying and other practices, declined to comment.
The company has previously said it created Teams to combine the ability to collaborate with the ability to connect via video and that it gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing.
The European Commission also declined comment.
“As you know the assessment of the complaint is ongoing so we cannot comment further,” it said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jan Harvey and Alexander Smith)
