Microsoft avoids EU fine in antitrust case over Teams bundling
In its ruling, the European Commission said it has accepted Microsoft's commitments to address concerns over tying Teams with its widely used productivity suite that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
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Microsoft has avoided a fine from the European Commission after being charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling its Teams app with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions, The Verge reported.
The decision follows an anti-competitive complaint filed by Slack in July 2020.
In its ruling, the European Commission said it has accepted Microsoft's commitments to address concerns over tying Teams with its widely used productivity suite that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
"The commitments address the Commission’s concerns related to the tying of Microsoft Teams to the company’s popular productivity applications," the Commission stated, as per the report.
Microsoft's Commitments
To resolve the case, Microsoft has pledged to:
- Offer Office suites without Teams at a reduced price.
- Allow customers with long-term licenses to switch to suites without Teams.
- Enable interoperability between rival communication tools and Microsoft products.
- Provide data portability, allowing customers to move data out of Teams to competing platforms.
Most commitments will remain in force for seven years, while interoperability and data portability measures will extend for ten years, the report added.
Microsoft had already started unbundling Teams from Office in Europe in 2023, and later spun off Teams globally as a separate app to ease regulatory scrutiny.
EU lawmakers opened their Microsoft antitrust probe in 2023, after Slack alleged that Microsoft had "illegally tied" Teams to Office, force-installed it for millions, blocked its removal, and obscured its cost to enterprise customers.
