Salesforce and its messaging platform, Slack, have officially filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in London's High Court, alleging that the tech giant is using its market dominance to crush competition in the workplace software industry, according to a report.
Lawsuit Details
Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses Microsoft of anti-competitive behaviour. Specifically, Slack argues that Microsoft 'tied' and 'bundled' its Teams messaging app with its Office suite, effectively forcing the product onto customers and limiting their ability to choose rival services. A Slack spokesperson said, 'Microsoft's practices harmed competition, using tying and bundling of Teams to limit customer choice,' as reported by Reuters.
Global Dispute Over Microsoft Teams
This is not the first time Microsoft's bundling strategy has come under fire. In 2020, Slack filed a similar complaint with the European Commission. To avoid a massive fine in Europe last year, Microsoft agreed to lower the price of Office products for customers who chose to opt out of Teams. However, the new UK lawsuit suggests that rivals do not believe those concessions went far enough.
While Microsoft fights in London courts, it also faces legal scrutiny in the United States. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly accelerating a probe into whether Microsoft illegally monopolizes the enterprise computing market. In February this year, a report indicated that the FTC's investigation is focusing on whether Microsoft makes it harder for customers to use Windows or Office on rival clouds like Amazon or Google, and whether the company is unfairly integrating its Copilot AI and security software into Windows to lock out competitors.
Google's Criticism
Meanwhile, Google described Microsoft's practices as 'problematic,' filing its own complaint in Europe in late 2024. Google argued that Microsoft was using its 'dominant' Windows Server software to trap customers inside its Azure cloud platform. While Google recently withdrew that specific complaint to allow EU regulators to conduct a broader investigation, the company remains a vocal critic.
Microsoft has defended its business model, arguing that some products are not fully compatible with rival clouds because the underlying technology is simply different.
