Teams to be sold separately, ending bundle with Office amid antitrust scrutiny
Microsoft has announced it will cease the practice of bundling its Teams videoconferencing app with its Office software suite, a decision that comes in the wake of antitrust scrutiny, according to The Canadian Press.
From this week forward, customers purchasing Office subscriptions will find that Teams is no longer included as part of the package. This change will be implemented globally, extending a policy already put in place in Europe last year, where the products were first sold separately.
The separation of Teams from Office follows closely on the heels of an investigation by the European Union's executive commission. The commission, acting as the 27-nation bloc's foremost competition watchdog, initiated a formal inquiry into Microsoft's bundling practice.
The concern was that by including Teams with Office, Microsoft might be leveraging its market position unfairly, potentially sidelining competitors.
This investigation was sparked by a complaint from Slack Technologies in 2020. Slack, which is under the umbrella of Salesforce, charged that Microsoft was exploiting its dominant market stance to stifle competition.
According to Slack, Microsoft's strategy of integrating Teams directly into its Office suite—which encompasses widely used applications like Word, Excel, and Outlook—constituted an illegal move against competitive forces, breaching EU legislation.
