>Teams is not preinstalled with Windows; it's part of a suite of products.
Most businesses are buying that suite for Word/Excel. Teams comes along with it for free from their perspective. That can definitely be anti-competitive.
I agree that Slack's case is pretty weak here. It's hard to see the harm to the consumer when Microsoft's bundle is cheaper than Slack's lowest paid plan.
Skype for Business (or whatever the legacy chat product is or has been called) dates back to 2007 and was typically present in your EA seat license bundle. Slack might be better than Skype, but it’s weird to suggest that getting into a market with an established history suddenly becomes anti-competitive only as soon as your competitor actually produces something that’s not a raging dumpster fire.
Skype For Business was a separate product. It's only when rolling it into the office suite that it becomes problematic. And that is only because of the dominant position Word/Excel/PPT hold.
I personally don't think it's anti-competitive but I at least see the argument that can be made.
it was. two years ago i changed job and the current employer use Skype for business as it was part of Office 365. we moved off Skype when Windows Team roll out.
Microsoft have a monopoly on office software. All businesses more or less have to buy Microsoft Office. Microsoft bundles Teams for free with it.
There is something stopping businesses from using Slack - the fact that Microsoft gives them Teams for free.
To be honest I doubt this will be a successful case. Companies get away with this all the time. I think the Windows/IE case is the only instance I've ever heard of something coming from it.
Most businesses are buying that suite for Word/Excel. Teams comes along with it for free from their perspective. That can definitely be anti-competitive.
I agree that Slack's case is pretty weak here. It's hard to see the harm to the consumer when Microsoft's bundle is cheaper than Slack's lowest paid plan.