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Workplace chatting service Slack has filed a grievance in the European Union in opposition to Microsoft, accusing the software program firm of anti-competitive habits.
Slack said Wednesday that Microsoft illegally bundles its Microsoft Teams messaging product, which is analogous to Slack, into Office 365, its package deal of electronic mail and different broadly used enterprise software program. Slack says Microsoft forces corporations to put in it for hundreds of thousands and blocks its elimination.
Microsoft mentioned in a press release Wednesday that it appears ahead to offering the European Commission with extra info and answering its questions.
San Francisco-based Slack Technologies, which went public in 2019, has been rising quickly. It reported $201.7 million (roughly Rs. 1,507 crores) in gross sales in its February-April quarter, up 50 p.c from the identical time final yr. It additionally reported 122,000 paid prospects, up 28 p.c from when the corporate went public in April 2019.
Slack nonetheless faces robust competitors, notably from Microsoft’s Teams software program. Slack final month introduced an expanded partnership with Amazon’s cloud computing division, an try to affix forces with Microsoft’s chief rival. It extra lately introduced it’s shopping for Rimeto, which creates detailed workers directories.
Microsoft, which relies in Redmond, Washington, emphasised in its assertion Wednesday that the aggressive benefit of Teams has been connecting individuals on video.
“With COVID-19, the market has embraced Teams in record numbers while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing,” Microsoft mentioned.
The European Commission will assessment the grievance and determine whether or not to open a proper investigation.
If the European Commission decides to research, Microsoft might probably face enormous penalties. The European Union’s highly effective competitors commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, who has been on the vanguard of the worldwide motion to rein in large know-how corporations, has slapped Google with a number of antitrust fines totaling practically $10 billion (roughly Rs. 74,689 crores), which the corporate is interesting.
Last month the commissioner opened twin investigations into Apple’s cell app retailer and cost platform over considerations that its practices distort competitors, following a grievance filed by music streaming service Spotify.
But critics say large fines have not had a lot of an affect on tech giants, and Vestager has been weighing up stronger measures to curb their anti-competitive habits.
Vestager was dealt a setback earlier this month, when an EU courtroom dominated that Apple didn’t should pay EUR 13 billion (roughly Rs. 1.12 lakh crores) in again taxes to Ireland in a case relationship again to 2016, dealing a blow to the bloc’s efforts to clamp down on multinationals’ potential to strike particular tax offers with particular person EU international locations.
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