Slack has brought to an end Microsoft’s exceptionalism amid big tech’s current antitrust moment. The business messaging company lodged a European Union complaint against its much bigger rival on Wednesday, pulling it into the broad antitrust war being waged even more aggressively by the European regulators than by the U.S. agencies. Until now, Microsoft has been more of a bystander to the tech probes. In the case of Apple, it has even increasingly been an agitator for regulatory action, as we reported earlier this week.
Slack’s move also signals that enterprise software firms will be as energetic in defending themselves against big tech as firms in the consumer internet or hardware markets have been. More complaints from the sector are likely. One can imagine that Zoom Video might eventually have something to say on the subject. Like Slack, Zoom has a popular product that Microsoft and Google are both competing hard against, in part by bundling their alternatives with their existing suites of products.
