Microsoft to stop packaging Teams and Office software in Europe to head off EU antitrust action
Microsoft will stop packaging its Teams videoconferencing app with its Office software in Europe in an effort to head off antitrust penalties by regulators
LONDON — Microsoft will stop packaging its Teams videoconferencing app with its Office software in Europe in an effort to head off antitrust penalties by regulators.
The tech giant also said Thursday that it would take steps to make it easier for competing products to work alongside its software.
The announcement comes a month after the European Union's executive Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top competition enforcer, opened a formal investigation over concerns that bundling Teams with Office gives the company an unfair edge over competitors.
The investigation was triggered by a complaint filed in 2020 by Slack Technologies, maker of popular workplace messaging software.
Slack, owned by business software maker Salesforce, alleged that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance to eliminate competition — in violation of EU laws — by illegally combining Teams with its Office suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook.
«Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission’s investigation continues and we cooperate with it,» Microsoft's vice president of European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, said in a blog post.
It's not clear if the concessions will be enough to address the Commission's concerns.
“We take note of Microsoft’s announcement,” a Commission spokesperson said. “We have no further comment to make.”
Linde said the changes were made to address EU concerns that customers should be able to buy Office without Teams for a cheaper price and “that we
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