Microsoft announced Thursday that it will unbundle its Teams communications from its popular Office suite in an effort to allay EU antitrust concerns.
In July, the European Commission opened an investigation to see whether the US tech giant was abusing and defending its market position by bundling the software together. If the commission’s investigation finds Microsoft guilty, the corporation might face a hefty fine or other penalties.
To address the concerns, Microsoft will unbundle Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European Economic Area and Switzerland beginning October 1, according to Nanna-Louise Linde, the company’s vice president of European government affairs.
“Customers will now be able to buy the software without Teams at a lower price”, Linde continued.
In a blog post, the company’s vice president of European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde wrote, “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 Teams is included with its cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which include its popular Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Excel programmes.
The team is a communication platform that enables users to communicate via texts, video calls, and file sharing.
The investigation was sparked by a July 2020 complaint from Slack, a US startup competitor to Teams that was later acquired by Salesforce.
The commission was particularly concerned that Microsoft may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing competitors.
Microsoft will now make it easy for rivals’ software to interact with its own.
The EU’s investigation has no specific timeline for completion.
“We will continue to engage with the commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe”, Linde added.
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