Slack Lodges Competition Complaint Against Microsoft In European Commission
The conflict between Slack and Microsoft continues to worsen. The company has now submitted a competition complaint to the European Commission. The accusation: Microsoft uses illegal and anti-competitive practices and abuses its market position.
Slack sees a repetition of old Microsoft tactics
Slack defends itself against the apparently overpowering competitor Microsoft. After the CEO raged drastically against the Redmond group earlier this month, legal action is now taking place in the EU. As Business Wire reports, Slack has filed a competition complaint to seek a review of practices that are considered “illegal and anti-competitive”.
“We can’t ignore illegal behavior,” said Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policies at Slack, alluding to the close involvement of teams in the office suite. According to Prince, Microsoft is returning to “old behavior” and alluding to the company’s dark past in terms of the spread of Internet Explorer.
“They created a weak copycat product and inseparably linked it to their dominant office product, forced the installation and blocked the removal, a copy of their illegal behavior during the ‘browser wars'”, Slack said in the complaint to the European competition authorities.
Slack sees himself as an outsider
Slack sees himself clearly in the role of the outsider, who pulls into the field against the overpowering competitor. “We urge the EU to be a neutral arbitrator, to investigate the facts and to enforce the law,” said David Schellhase, the lawyer at Slack. “We want to be 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more valuable. You (Microsoft) want 100% of your budget every time,” Prince added. The next step is for the European Commission to investigate the complaint and then decide whether to investigate Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices. The “quick measures” that Slack wishes for are probably not to be expected.
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