After two years of investigation, Microsoft finally avoided EU regulation on its bundled sales of its collaboration platform Microsoft Teams.Antitrust risksEuropean Commissiondisplay, has now accepted the commitment plan proposed by Microsoft, including separating Microsfot Teams from Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites and selling them independently, and simultaneously increasing the price difference between versions containing or excluding Microsoft Teams services to ensure fair competition in the market.
The case can be traced back to the complaint filed by Slack in 2020, accusing Microsoft of forcing Microsoft Teams to be sold in conjunction with the Office suite, thereby restricting competitors from gaining more market competition opportunities.Formal investigation launched, and in 2024 it preliminarily determined that Microsoft did indeed gain improper distribution advantages and even restricted the interoperability between competing products and Microsoft services. If the ruling is upheld, Microsoft will face a fine of up to 10% of its global revenue.
In order to avoid huge fines, Microsoft began to provideOffice versions without Microsoft TeamsHowever, the EU believed at the time that this move was not enough to completely eliminate competition concerns and required further adjustments.
Ultimately, Microsoft pledged to widen the price gap between versions that include and exclude Microsoft Teams by another 50% and to no longer offer additional discounts on Microsoft Teams or packages that include it. Furthermore, Microsoft agreed to provide full software interoperability support, allowing competitors to embed Office applications into their own products, and to allow customers to access Microsoft Teams service messaging data and transfer it to other services.
According to the EU announcement, Microsoft's commitment will last for seven years, while the commitments on software interoperability and data portability will have to be fulfilled for ten years, and their implementation will be regularly checked by independent monitors.
