Zoom has had discussions with regulators over the past year about possible unfair competitive practices by Microsoft around Teams. This is what Bloomberg reports based on its sources.
These were reportedly discussions with the U.S. regulator FTC and competition authorities from the EU, UK and Germany. The topic of discussion were the possible anti-competitive practices by Microsoft.
This, Bloomberg writes, involved Zoom’s concerns about how Microsoft is trying to push its video conferencing platform Teams through price bundling and design.
Investigations
Microsoft has recently come under fire from regulators over Teams and other (cloud) services. The EU is investigating whether bundling Teams into Microsoft 365 and Office 365 violates competition rules. Microsoft has announced it will unbundle this bundling as of Oct. 1.
The German regulator is investigating whether the bundling of Microsoft’s online storage application OneDrive and Teams violates competition rules. In the UK and US, regulators are investigating Azure’s cloud services. The British in particular want to know whether the power of Microsoft’s public cloud service, like those of Google and AWS, limits innovation.
Comments
Microsoft has not yet commented on the possible talks Zoom is said to have had about the dominance around Teams.
Zoom also does not want to comment. Recently, though, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan had hinted at a Goldman Sachs conference that competition in the video conferencing market is actually a sports game and should be fair. According to him, the best team has no chance when the other side gets extra points for every shot.
Also read: Microsoft sees its Teams unbundling as a compromise for the EU