Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has taken yet another swipe at Microsoft.
Over the past year, Benioff has done so multiple times, chastising its Copilot product.
Indeed, he repeatedly referred to the product as "Clippy 2.0" while accusing Microsoft of "disappointing many customers" and "spilling data everywhere".
However, the CEO has found a new stick with which to beat Microsoft: its ethics.
Specifically, Benioff shared his thoughts on the European Commission’s ongoing investigation into its bundling of Microsoft Teams with Office 365 – after Slack filed a complaint in July 2020.
Upon launching the investigation, the Commission revealed concerns about Microsoft "abusing" its market position with "anti-competitive" practices.
Until now, the CEO has kept quiet on the matter, stressing that the lawsuit predates Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack.
However, the gloves are now off as the overlap – and competition - between the two tech giants increases in the agentic AI era.
"You can see the horrible things that Microsoft did to Slack before we bought it," said Benioff during an interview with SaaStr.
"They were running their playbook and did a lot of dark stuff, and it's all written up in an EU complaint that Slack made before we bought them.
You never really know what Microsoft is going to do, but that was pretty nasty.
"I don’t really admire what Microsoft did with Slack and how they used a lot of their assets to really try to attack them when Slack wasn’t really going up against Microsoft," continued Benioff.
"You can see that playbook being used. We saw it with Netscape, and we saw it in many things over time. That playbook should get ripped up and thrown away."
Netscape was an internet browser and an early competitor to Internet Explorer. Yet, Microsoft edged them out by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
Additionally, the tech giant was accused of deploying a "shell execute bug" within Windows, making it difficult for users to deploy the Netscape Navigator.
However, Microsoft is far from the first tech juggernaut to leverage such a "playbook".
For instance, Apple faces a lawsuit from the Department of Justice (DOJ) for several anti-competitive maneuvers relating to its iPhone ecosystem.
These maneuvers include not giving "super apps" – like WeChat – full functionality on iPhone, poor connectivity between non-Apple smartwatches and iPhones, and its digital wallet locking out third parties.
While Benioff acknowledged that there has always been aggression in software, he stressed that "there are limits" that vendors should adhere to.
Now, the CEO thinks that Microsoft is again dusting off its playbook.