By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators have been following up on a Slack Technologies (NYSE) complaint and are asking Microsoft (NASDAQ) competitors if their Teams app is integrated with its Office product. This could indicate that they may open an investigation.

The European Commission focuses on 2016-2021 in a survey sent out to competitors and seen by Reuters. Microsoft launched Teams early 2017, to compete against Slack, and other players in this fast-growing market for workplace collaboration.

Salesforce.com purchased Slack (NYSE:) last July. Last year, the Commission heard Slack’s complaint over Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft has declined comment after it was handed €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion in EU fines) for cases that involved so-called tying.

Slack claimed that Office and Teams were illegally tied or bundled together, and asked the EU competition agency for a separation.

According to Microsoft, Microsoft preinstalls workplace chat and is difficult to undo. The U.S. company also refused to disclose information that would enable rival products to integrate with Office or Teams.

Accordingly, the Commission asked if companies with bundled products have access to data, which could increase their market power on both markets, and make it difficult for other competitors to do the same, particularly those that only sell one product.

The market has been surveyed to determine whether there are any barriers or opportunities for expansion, as well as switching costs and how important it is that users keep their data private.

Rivals were asked about a customer list that had switched to Microsoft Teams, or the bundled Office. The percentage of revenue they lost, how much innovation was involved, as well the price and quality of their products.

Questionnaire asked whether the COVID-19 was boosting demand for workplace applications and how that will change post-pandemic.

Some other companies offer workplace apps, such as Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ :), Alphabet NASDAQ 🙂 Google’s Facebook, Google (NASDAQ 🙂 and Cisco (NASDAQ :).

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