Financial Times reportIt is alleged that Microsoft will stop bundling the Microsoft Teams service with its Office suite to avoid being found by EU regulators to have violated market monopoly.
According to reports, future Office suite software sales plans will offer combinations of service tools such as Word and PowerPoint, as well as combination options that additionally include Microsoft Teams services.
However, Microsoft did not explain how it would split the Microsoft Teams service, which is deeply integrated with the Office suite, in the future. It is also unclear whether the EU is willing to accept Microsoft's approach and reach a consensus.
In the past, Microsoft was found by the European Union to have violated market monopoly because the IE browser was deeply integrated into the Windows operating system and became the default usage option, resulting in an imbalance in competition with other browsers. Microsoft finally reached a settlement with the EU in 2009, and allowed users to choose the browser they wanted to use during the Windows operating system installation process.
However, the EU still made a ruling in 2013 that Microsoft had not met the EU's requirements, and fined Microsoft 5.61 million euros for violating the market monopoly. This time, because the Microsoft Teams service was found to have violated the market monopoly, whether it will face the same situation again depends on how Microsoft negotiates with the EU antitrust agency next.
As for the possibility that Microsoft may be found to have violated market monopoly by the European Union this time, the main reason is that Salesforce, which acquired the Slack collaboration tool service, filed a complaint with the European Union, believing that Microsoft's practice of bundling the sale of Microsoft Teams violated market monopoly, which led to the European Union launching an investigation into Microsoft.
