Microsoft to Avoid Antitrust Action in Europe by Discontinuing Packaging of Teams and Office Software
In an attempt to avoid antitrust penalties from regulators, Microsoft has decided to cease bundling its Teams videoconferencing application with its Office software in Europe.
The tech giant also said Thursday that it is taking steps to make it easier for competing products to run alongside its software.
The announcement comes a month after the European Union’s executive commission, the 27-nation bloc’s chief competition watchdog, opened a formal investigation into concerns that combining Teams with Office gives the company an unfair advantage over rivals.
The investigation was initiated in 2020 by a complaint filed by the most popular workplace communication software manufacturer, Slack Technologies.
Slack, owned by enterprise software maker Salesforce, claimed that Microsoft abused its dominant market position to eliminate competition – in violation of EU law – by illegally bundling Teams with the Office suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook.
“Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will begin to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even as the European Commission’s investigation continues and we cooperate with it,” said Nanna-Louise Linde, vice president of European government affairs at Microsoft. blog post.
It is not clear whether the concessions will be enough to address the commission’s concerns.
“We are taking Microsoft’s announcement into account,” a commission spokesman said. “We have no further comment.”
Linde said the changes were made to address EU concerns that customers should be able to buy Office without Teams at a lower price and that “we should do more to facilitate interoperability” with competing communications and collaboration software.
The changes will take effect on October 1 in the 30-country European Economic Area and Switzerland. For its core business customers, who represent most of its business in the region, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is lowering the price by 2 euros ($2.17) a month for the Office suite without Teams. Existing customers can stay on their current plan or switch to a version without Teams.
New business customers can buy a separate version of Teams for 5 euros per month.
Linde said Microsoft would provide more support to software developers, including providing more information on how data can be removed from Teams and used in other software. The company also makes it easier for competitors to use Microsoft functions instead of building their own.
Microsoft and other US tech giants have faced pressure from Brussels, worried about their dominant market position. The commission has investigated Meta, the owner of Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook and Instagram.
Microsoft, which last came under an EU antitrust investigation more than a decade ago, is also trying to save its $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision. The agreement was approved by the Commission, but it is stuck in Britain.
