Microsoft unbundles Teams from Office over antitrust concerns

The news: Microsoft will begin selling its Teams video and chat app separately from its Office products across the globe, six months after unbundling the same products in Europe to avoid competition fines.

The numbers: Microsoft has accrued €2.2 billion ($3.64 billion) in EU antitrust fines over the past ten years over the bundling of certain products, and now risks penalties that could amount to 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of antitrust breaches.

The context: Teams was added to Office 365 in 2017, replacing Skype for Business, and became widely used for its video conferencing capabilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, rivals argued that offering the products as a bundle gives Microsoft an unfair advantage and Salesforce-owned Slack made a complaint in 2020. The European Commission has been investigating the complaint, prompting Microsoft to unbundle Teams from Microsoft365 and Office365 in the Euro area in August last year.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters that today’s decision to unbundle the two products globally follows on the European decision last year. The spokesperson said that “doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardize their purchasing across geographies.”