Microsoft announced on Thursday that it would detach its chat and video app Teams from its Office product and make it simpler for competing products to integrate with its software in an effort to avoid a potential EU antitrust fine.
After receiving a complaint from the Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack in 2020, the European Commission opened an investigation into Microsoft’s integration of Office and Teams. A month later, the proposed changes were made.
Microsoft’s initial concessions fell short of resolving the issues. The company’s announcement was noted by the EU competition enforcer, who on Thursday declined to comment further.
In 2017, Teams was a free addition to Office 365. It eventually supplanted Skype for Business and grew in popularity during the pandemic, thanks in part to its video conferencing capabilities.
“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,” Nanna-Louise Linde, Microsoft’s vice president for European government affairs, said in a blog post.
She stated that the changes are intended to address two EU concerns: “that customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a lower price than those that include Teams, and that we should do more to facilitate interoperability between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites.”
The changes will take effect on October 1 in Europe and Switzerland.
Teams will be sold for 2 euros less per month or 24 euros ($26.17) per year to Microsoft’s core enterprise customers, who account for the majority of the company’s commercial business in Europe.
New enterprise customers can purchase Teams separately for 5 euros per month or 60 euros per year, while existing enterprise customers who already have a suite with Teams can keep it or switch to a suite without Teams.
Customers and independent software vendors who want to remove data from Teams and use it in another product will have access to new support resources.
Microsoft will also create a new method, similar to Teams, for hosting Office web applications within competing apps and services.
The stakes are high for the US tech behemoth, which racked up 2.2 billion euros ($2.40 billion) in EU antitrust fines in the previous decade for tying or bundling two or more products together but has since sought a more accommodating approach with regulators.