Update: European Commission Preliminary Findings Show Microsoft's Bundling of Teams with Office Violated Bloc's Antitrust Rules...

Microsoft shares fell slightly in Tuesday premarket trading after European Union antitrust officials said the tech giant might have stifled competition in the bloc over its bundling of Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Microsoft shares closed at $447.67 on Monday and were down 0.3% Tuesday premarket, touching a low of $446.06. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections—a formal step to inform parties of objections against a potential deal or market practices...

EU antitrust regulators on Tuesday charged Microsoft of illegally bundling its chat and video app Teams with its Office product and say that recent moves by the U.S. tech giant to unbundle the package were sufficient and more needed to be done. "Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365," the European Commission said in a statement. "The Commission preliminarily finds that these changes are insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft's conduct are necessary to restore competition," it said, referring to Microsoft's unbundling of Teams from Office announced in recent months...

European Union regulators accused Microsoft of “possibly abusive” practices that violate the bloc's antitrust rules by tying its Teams messaging and videoconferencing app to its widely used business software. The European Commission said it's concerned the U.S. tech giant has been “restricting competition” by bundling Teams with core office productivity applications such as Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The commission, the 27-nation bloc's top antitrust enforcer, said it suspects Microsoft might have granted Teams a “distribution advantage” by not giving customers a choice on whether to have Teams when they purchased the software...