BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The European Commission has accepted commitments from Microsoft to address EU competition concerns relating to its popular team collaboration platform Teams. These commitments will henceforth be legally binding under EU antitrust rules, the Commission said.
The commitments address the Commission's concerns related to the tying of Microsoft Teams to the company's popular productivity applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, included in its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites for business customers.
Under the commitments, Microsoft will make available versions of these suites without Teams and at a reduced price; allow customers with long-term licenses to switch to suites without Teams; provide interoperability for key functionalities between communication and collaboration tools that compete with Teams and certain Microsoft products; and allow customers to move their data out of Teams to facilitate the use of competing solutions.
The European Commission said that by helping to restore fair competition, these commitments will open up the market for other providers of communication and collaboration tools in Europe.
When Teams was launched, Microsoft included it by default in Office 365 and Microsoft 365, its widely used SaaS productivity suites for business customers.
Following the opening of a formal investigation in July 2023, the Commission found that Microsoft holds a dominant position in the worldwide market for SaaS productivity applications for professional use; and that since at least April 2019, the technology giant has been tying Teams with its market-leading productivity applications, in breach of EU laws.
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