To avoid an official antitrust probe by European Union (EU) regulators, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer require users of its popular Office software to also install its Teams video conferencing and messaging app on their devices.
Microsoft has made the concession to avoid a formal investigation, following a 2020 complaint by rival Slack (an enterprise chat app) alleging Microsoft bundling the service together was anti-competitive.
Slack’s complaint came at a time when the trend towards working from home was accelerating.
Apps like Teams and Slack exploded in popularity during the Covid pandemic, creating a multi-billion-dollar opportunity as users and businesses increasingly adopt tools that enable remote working, the report said.
Competing remote-work platform Slack, Slack has requested that EU officials compel Microsoft to sell Teams independently of its Office software.
Ft’s sources say companies will eventually be able to buy office with or without Teams installed, “but the mechanism on how to do it remains unclear”. Talks with EU regulators are reportedly ongoing and “a deal is not certain.” Microsoft told FT, “We are mindful of our responsibilities in the EU as a major technology company. We continue to engage cooperatively with the commission in it’s investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well.”
“We are mindful of our responsibilities in the EU as a major technology company. We continue to engage cooperatively with the commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well,” Microsoft was quoted as saying.
Moreover, the report said that Microsoft was accused by commission in 2008 of using it’s dominant position to force users to download it’s Internet Explorer browser by bundling it with Windows.
Although the company settled with the commission and offered users a choice of browsers, the EU fined the company 561 million in 2013 for failing to fulfill it’s promise. Of course, it’s most famous antitrust shakeup came around the turn of the millennium when it was initially forced to break up into two companies, a ruling later overturned by an appeals court.
Microsoft and DOJ settled in 2001, agreeing to restrictions like sharing APIs with third part developers.
In recent months, the company has been scrambling to receive regulatory approval for it’s planned $69 billion purchase of game publisher Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft offered 10 year legal agreements to provide Call of Duty on Nintendo consoles and cloud-streaming platform. It was heard Sony refused a similar offer.
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has threatened to sue Microsoft over claims that the company “trained illegally using Twitter Data”. Musk reacted after Microsoft dropped Twitter from it’s advertising platform as it allegedly refused to pay Twitter’s application programming interface(API) fees.
