Microsoft will dissociate Teams and Office to appease Brussels

The Microsoft group announced Thursday that it was going to dissociate its Teams videoconferencing application from its Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook office software to appease Brussels, which suspects the American giant of anti-competitive practices.

The European Commission, which suspects Microsoft of having abused its dominant position in software to promote the development of Teams to the detriment of competitors, opened an investigation in July. The case started three years ago, in July 2020, with a complaint from the American start-up Slack, in the meantime acquired by Salesforce. If these suspicions are proven, the American tech giant, already sanctioned several times by Brussels, could be imposed a new heavy fine.

In order to address the concerns of the European competition watchdog, Microsoft will dissociate Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European Economic Area and Switzerland from October 1, said Nanna-Louise Linde, vice president of the company.

Customers will now be able to purchase the software without Teams at a lower price, she said. "We are announcing proactive changes which we hope will begin to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even as the European Commission's investigation continues and we cooperate with them," Nanna-Louise Linde wrote in a blog post. Microsoft offers Teams with its cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which include popular Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Excel programs. Teams is a platform that allows users to communicate through messages, video calls, and file sharing.

The Commission was also concerned that Microsoft may have limited interoperability between its software and competing products. Microsoft will now make sure that its competitors' software can work more easily with its own. "We will continue to engage with the Commission, listen to market concerns and explore pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe," Linde said.