Can the EU dissuade Microsoft from bundling?

Microsoft is facing further investigation by the European Union’s antitrust authorities, this time stemming from the company’s decision during the pandemic to bundle its Teams videoconferencing software with Office and Windows 11, in which it gets automatically installed and added to the taskbar.

The case brings to mind what happened in the 1990s with Internet Explorer, the browser that Microsoft decided to include free of charge in Windows as the internet took off, a move that did away with Netscape, briefly attaining supremacy in the browser market. This case, one of the most studied in antitrust law, even threatened the breakup of the company into subsidiaries.

Microsoft is no stranger to bundling. There was, in fact, a time when it was impossible to buy a computer that did not come with Windows installed, which greatly annoyed those who wanted to install another operating system and avoid paying for a license.

Microsoft’s decision to make Teams widely available when the pandemic began was a competitive reaction to the strong growth of tools such as Zoom, and that the company was able, thanks to its dominance, to generate huge profits from that strategy. By including its product in Office and Windows, Microsoft was able to reach users immediately, an advantage that other competing applications could not match. But…